It is now the beginning of December, which means that it is officially Christmas season! This, in many ways, is great: we get to experience the magical Christmassy atmosphere, admire the Christmas lights in the streets, drink litres of mulled wine, and eat tons of chocolates. Everything seems more light-hearted, and we can fully embrace our inner child. However, this is only one side of the coin. The Christmas period can also be extremely draining, stressful, and therefore, for some people, not as enjoyable as the movies may picture it.
There are several factors that contribute to the Christmas period being particularly stressful and somewhat draining. Just as a disclaimer, this article does not intend to denigrate the festive season and the entire culture around it, it simply aims to address issues that numerous people face during this time of the year but very few speak about openly.
Socially, the festive period can be a nightmare. One of the first things that come to my mind when I think of Christmas, or the Christmas period in general, are the numerous festivities and celebrations that surround it, from Christmas parties to Christmas dinners and everything in between. And even though all these events are a great way to get into the festive spirit, see your friends and have fun, they can also be incredibly draining and mentally tiring. There seems to be an additional pressure of attending all the events you’re invited to during this time of the year, partly because society makes us believe that, if you don’t have a Christmas period filled with social events, you haven’t done it right! We, therefore, feel forced to attend all kinds of different parties and take part in Secret Santas to ease our conscience and to convince ourselves that we are feeling Christmassy. After a point, it is inevitable to feel our social batteries get low and to wonder why we’re even putting ourselves through this 5th Christmas party that we were invited to by this random acquaintance. In other words, if you’re a people pleaser and hate saying “no” to things, the Christmas period will be a real test!
On a practical level, Christmas is the time when social events get organised by numerous people of various compartments of our lives: all our different friend groups, our work, university society, family member etc, which can be extremely overwhelming. It seems like it has been socially established that the Christmas period is the time when you need to be catching up with everyone you haven’t seen in a year. For people with social anxiety, or who struggle with social interactions, this can be particularly tricky and overwhelming.
For us university students, this is the period with the most assignments. It just seems like our professors have never heard of the word “Christmas break” before. As a result, all our assignments seem to be set around December and January time! This means that most of our days are spent in the library or at home, nailed to our laptop screens and our books, desperately trying to get on top of our workload. Moreover, we feel bad every time we cancel Christmas plans to get our essay done because we are convinced that we are wasting this precious, most wonderful time of the year (remember my first point?). And if this wasn’t enough, we are convinced that we’re the only ones not being able to balance work and social life in this particularly stressful time, even though, in reality, we’re all in the same boat!
Financially, this period can be tough. Let’s be real for a second: Christmas is the time of the year when we’re all broke because it’s expensive. Buying Christmas presents for everyone, Secret Santas, Christmas markets and other treats are unfortunately not free, which means that, even though we’re celebrating, our bank account isn’t, which also can be a source of stress.
Everyone expects you to be happy all the time. This is a point that I couldn’t put my finger on for years: during the Christmas period, everyone expects you to be incredibly happy and festive all the time and you feel such a strong pressure to have a “perfect Christmas”, to the point where you can start beating yourself up when you have down days or moments when you aren’t in the Christmas spirit at all. In some cases, people can even feel depressed during this specific time of the year.
This topic is extremely taboo but very common, so common in fact that there even is an official term for it: holiday depression. This is most commonly caused by factors such as increased stress, loneliness, or other mental health issues.
In conclusion, despite being a really fun and magical time, Christmas can also be a very stressful, lonely, overwhelming, and anxiety-inducing period. I believe that the best way to make this period enjoyable for everyone is to simply check in with our friends regularly and have open conversations about how they are truly feeling. This will break the taboo of feeling low during the Christmas period and therefore decrease the pressure or expectation of every second of it having to be perfect!