The Big Christmas Lie
And why we always fall for it
Full disclosure, I love Christmas. I am extremely lucky still to have both parents functioning, a husband and a grown up son, as well as current inlaws and ex-inlaws whom I love. I have just about enough money to buy presents and food, and a nice warm house (ours or my mum and dad’s) to celebrate in.
As far as festive times go, I’ve hit the jackpot and snowflakes and tangerines are showering from the slot. I’m not saying this to boast, however. I know very well that life turns on a sixpence, and I’m a naturally gloomy person. Every year I think ‘made it again’, with an inner sigh of relief. And every year, I look at the deluge of Christmas adverts and ‘gift lists’ and despite everything, I still feel somehow inadequate.
Christmas is a time for selling, where once it was a time for worship. We used to trudge off to church to sing carols and be thankful, now we trudge off to Boots to try and tick three random things off the present list, and come out thinking, ‘that won’t be enough, I’ll have to get them some chocolates as well.’
I know people who have ‘present drawers’ which they spend all year building up, just in case a passing neighbour brings a tin of Roses on Christmas Eve and they immediately need to reciprocate with a Yankee Candle that smells of laundry. There’s no matching of gift and recipient, it’s just a tit for tat exchange to avoid social embarrassment.
Lack of festive Victorian crowds in top hats, waving mistletoe, is an indication of poor social worth
I also know people who worry that their Christmas isn’t good enough and that their lack of festive Victorian crowds in top hats, waving mistletoe, is an indication of their poor social worth. It’s hardly surprising when every year, magazines feature headlines like: ‘I’m spending Christmas alone!’ with a photo of a bravely smiling woman whose children are in Australia and whose friends are busy. Spending one single day alone is presented as such an anomaly, it’s worthy of an entire page. And you notice it’s never men. They’re allowed to be alone, only women are somehow considered outliers or defective if they’ve somehow failed to be surrounded by family.
Alongside the disingenuous stigmatising of a solo Christmas are the images of great feasts, tables piled high with turkey, crackers, mince pies, cake, potatoes, jugs of mulled wine and bottles of champagne … as if anyone would or could eat or drink it all at the same time, like a festive Very Hungry Caterpillar, relentlessly chomping through marzipan and goose leg, truffles and king prawns.
There’s always a crowd, grabbing and laughing, swigging and singing, in a Diverse Britain simulacrum of a medieval alehouse print, with a cheeky grandad and an adorable mixed-heritage child. They couldn’t possibly be having more fun, in these stock images or budget supermarket ads. Nobody has ever unwrapped presents so gleefully, from a pile of shining, bow-tied gifts under a great, benign, frost-tipped tree laden with jewels and baubles and lights. When they’re watching TV together, these people, nobody is ever on their phone, scrolling through the early sales to avoid having to engage with their narcissistic mother or depressed brother. Nobody is in their childhood bedroom watching Mindhunter on Netflix to avoid the celebrity nonsense they’re all slumped in front of in the living room. Nobody is ever counting the hours till they can go home and stop feeling like a 14 year old trapped forever in their unhappy youth like a fly in amber, in a room that’s too hot and full of crumbs and irritation.
From November onwards, too, the media is full of gift guides and recipes and Christmas Countdowns for Your Best Big Day Ever. I’ve written them myself, cobbling press releases into grids of ‘tech gifts for under 18s’ and ‘foodie must-haves for the cook in your life.’
As a part time recipe writer, I’ve wracked my brains for ‘a twist on a Christmas classic’ side dishes - why not add wild mushrooms to your sprouts? Or marjoram to your carrots, meaning everyone who reads it will spend December 23rd traipsing from store to store searching hopelessly for bloody marjoram (Try Waitrose, the queue’s only nine miles long).
Editors want jolly pictures and advertisers like expensive goods in the magazine
It’s purely because magazines and websites can’t just repeat the same thing every year - ‘do a turkey crown with roast potatoes’ - because people won’t click worriedly to see what the ‘super-festive twist on bread sauce you must try this Christmas’ is, and then the advertisers will see that clicks are down, and the site will lose money.
I’ve also written gift guides featuring £400 dog beds and £2000 watches. Not because we think anyone will really buy them, but because editors want jolly pictures and advertisers like expensive goods in the magazine because it makes them look good by association.
No wonder, then, that for so many of us, Christmas seems to be happening somewhere else, in a Truman Show bubble of holly and bells and happy families, and we’re trapped outside, our cold noses pressed against the snow-globe of festive advertising.
Ever since the Victorians monetised Christmas, with trees and Tom Smith’s crackers and candles and etchings of jolly carol singers, and A Bloody Christmas Carol, our collective idea of Christmas has been deep in snow. But according to the website Wanstead Meteo, which looks at historical weather patterns, “The 1840s and 1850s, decades where most Christmas traditions marked today began, were often very mild, wet and windy – indeed before 2015 the warmest Christmas Day maximum temperature at Greenwich occurred in 1852 when the mercury reached 13.3C.”
The whole Victorian snowy Christmas thing was pretty much lies, probably to pander to Prince Albert who missed his snowy German Christmases. And the jolly, fake, envy-inducing images have never stopped since. Because Christmas is all about selling the idea of more and more and more abundance, warmth, food and gifts, and we are always the orphans, creeping closer to the fire, seeing dream castles in the flames.
NEW SECTION: PROBLEM OF THE WEEK
As well as writing about many things, I’m an agony aunt. I’ve written problem pages for Company, Real, The Mirror, Women’s Health, I’ve had a radio phone-in called Emotional Rescue and currently, I’m the agony aunt for Candis Magazine. I also answer problems free for my friends. I sometimes find there’s not enough space to give a proper answer, so here, I’ll answer problems in full. Send your problem to fliceverett@icloud.com, or DM me on Twitter (@fliceverett) and I promise it will be anonymous.
HOW DO I GET OVER THE EMPTY NEST?
Q: The phrase Empty nest syndrome doesn’t do it justice. My youngest - of three - has left home and it’s definitely the right thing for her. New job, new city, new start. All positive stuff and she’s buzzing. I, however, am a mess. I’m shocked by the depth of my emotions; raw, deep, deep grief.
Being a single parent makes it worse - we were like a double act and had/have a strong relationship - she confides in me a lot. It’s different from my relationship with the other two. The solution, I think, is for me to get out more, fill my life up with things to do. I try, but the grief is unbearable.
A: The world is full of parenting advice on raising babies, toddlers, infants, juniors and teens. You could paper Britain with print-outs of all the well meaning ‘you go, Mama, you’re doing your best!’ articles, and the endless problem-solving applied to raising children. One of the biggest websites in Britain, Mumsnet, is dedicated entirely to How To Manage Kids (though fair to say, its remit has occasionally drifted a little). From birth to 18th birthday, we’re bombarded with help, commentary, opinions, images, videos and support. Then they leave home and it just… stops. That’s it, job done. The child you spent the majority of your adult life loving, nurturing, supporting, laughing with, arguing with, prioritising above every single need or wish of your own is gone, like the genie in a panto, and you’re expected simply to breathe a sigh of relief and get on with volunteering at Oxfam and joining your local midlife runners group. Or you can travel more, or convert that newly spare room into a yoga studio.
Yes, maybe you can, if you’re a psychopath. The rest of us, however, are going to mourn. It’s not because we aren’t happy our children are living their own lives, exploring the world, and so on (though let’s be honest, are we always happy about that, when they needed us more than anyone on earth until ten minutes ago? Of course not). All those parents laughing gaily about being ‘glad to have the bathroom back’ - who cares about a bloody shower when the person you adore, the love of your life, is not here anymore? What price travel when your beloved child isn’t there to finnick through unwanted pizza toppings and scowl at their phone instead of admiring the sunset?
I get it. This happened to me. My beloved, adored only son turned 18 and went to university and I basically had a breakdown. I had him when I was 22, my entire adult life was focused on raising him - getting a job to afford a house for him to grow up in, earning money to buy him clothes and presents and holidays, being available to him at all times - I loved it. It was my guiding purpose. He was clever, funny, sweet - the best company in the world. And then, inevitably, he went.
Obviously, he came back, but when children go and return they aren’t the same. They change when they’re away, as they should. They meet new people and grow new attitudes and try out new guises on the way to adulthood. Most of them will be guises you no longer recognise as the child you once knew inside out.
People who say, ‘oh they’ll be back, haha! You won’t get rid of them that easily!’ miss the point. Yes, they may well return home for indefinite periods. But the relationship you now have will be with an adult, and your active parenting, mum-and-child dynamic years are over.
So of course you feel like this. As a single parent, a child can very easily become your best friend. Some may say it’s unhealthy, and the parent/child boundary must be maintained at all times. I think when you love each other, and get on brilliantly, and make each other laugh, how can you not be best friends? Your daughter doesn’t love you any less, but she isn’t available to you in the same way, and you know it would be wrong and damaging to chase her, trying to recreate your old relationship in the face of all her new ones.
The mistake is in thinking that filling your life up with things to do will make the pain go away. It won’t. The only things that will do that are time, and acceptance. Hand yourself over to them. Don’t lie in bed thinking that you’re doing it wrong, that your grief is obscene, when other people seem to be fine. I wasn’t fine. Many, many mothers aren’t fine. But you will be.
A huge life role has been taken from you by nothing more than the passing of time, and it needs to pass further before you can get used to it and build your life differently. I think talking to other mothers who are suffering is useful, and if you can afford it, therapy can be hugely helpful, to talk about loss, and motherhood. If you can’t (and not many can at the moment), talk to friends.
What you must try to avoid is talking about it to your daughter. She will feel guilty and that will be a block to her growth and happiness. Always be thrilled to see her, but never beg her to stay longer. A lamb you’ve bottle fed eventually needs to go and be with its own kind in the fields, and it’s the same with children. Keeping it housebound is a form of cruelty.
Two things, then. First, accept how you feel. It isn’t abnormal, though it is currently unbearable. Second, don’t project ahead - oh, the empty years, stretching into the distance..! They don’t exist, they’re a construct of your imagination. All that exists is now, and it’s up to you what you do to make your time feel meaningful again.
It’s twelve years since my son left home, and sometimes, its been a very bumpy ride. But now, I see him for at least a few days every month, and I cherish and love the time we spend together. You will too, with your daughter, and new experiences will open up for both of you. Give it time.
RECIPE OF THE WEEK: Mascarpone and hazelnut tagliatelle
This is so easy and yet you could willingly believe you’d ordered it in a small trattoria overlooking a Tuscan hillside, while the couple who own the restaurant flick aprons at each other and argue about procuring the best hazelnuts in the background. The sun’s setting on the autumnal groves spread before you, there’s a carafe of white wine being poured with a sound like a trickling, sun-warmed fountain beneath a loggia… anyway, it’s really good.
Serves 1
Ingredients
3 - 4 nests of tagliatelle
1 tbsp olive oil
30g hazelnuts
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
a large handful of chestnut mushrooms, sliced
1 tbsp white wine/lemon juice
2 tbsps drained mascarpone
chopped parsley
20g Parmesan or (for vegetarians) Italian Hard Cheese
black pepper
Method
1 Put a large pan of salted water on to boil, and when it’s bubbling, throw in the nests, combing with a fork to separate.
2 Heat a dry, non-stick frying pan on medium and toast the hazelnuts, stirring them around for 2-3 mins, until their skins peel. Pour them into a tea-towel, and rub to remove the rest, then fold in and give them a quick bash with a rolling pin.
3 Add the olive oil to a small frying pan, over a low heat, and cook the garlic until soft. Add the mushrooms and cook till golden.
4 Stir in the wine or lemon juice and cook down till it’s been absorbed, then take the pan off the heat and stir through the mascarpone. Add in the hazelnuts, drain the pasta, and stir it all together.
5 Top with parsley and parmesan/hard cheese and lots of black pepper.
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Christmas and Empty Nest ( x 4) in one hit.
Goodness/ Gosh. Both delivering such a familiar gut punch -but so often unspoken.
You’ve got me .
Here’s to all the non psychopaths !
Thanks .
Jennifer .
Great piece. And I'm a Boots three-for-two survivor too. But I'm not with you on the 'it's never men' thing. I've seen plenty of pieces about the misery of being alone at Christmas, aimed squarely at divorced fathers without custody, single elderly men, etc I suppose it depends on the media you consume, and the audience it's aiming at. But I'm sure we both agree, it's awful, irrespective of gender: and it should definitely be equally portrayed as such.