Lost the love for Christmas? Here’s how to find it again.

How do you feel about Christmas? Do you love it? Look forward to the togetherness, the food, the decorations and music? Perhaps you even enjoy the preparations and present buying. If you do, that’s really wonderful. But it’s not quite that easy for some of us.

I enjoyed Christmas for many years. As a child, I loved the decorations, the lights on the tree, the excitement of presents and waking up to the lumpy stocking on the end of my bed. When I grew up and had a home of my own, I enjoyed decorating it and planning the day, buying and preparing food.

Somewhere in my 40s, however, the excitement died. A difficult home life meant that several Christmases were marred by arguments and pain. Both of my grandfathers died in December, and both of their funerals were held, on different years, on the day before Christmas Eve. Eventually, the weight of sadness became too much and I fell out of love with Christmas. All the jollity felt false; I could only see the commercialisation and the pressure on women (particularly) to make the day itself impossibly perfect. For several years, I dreaded the festive season and just looked forward to it being over. I founded a ‘January Appreciation Club’ with a couple of friends who also found Christmas difficult. Unlike the many who find January flat, depressing and dreary, we looked forward to the calm, the very slightly longer days and the run up to Spring.

Looking forward to January, while trying not to dread Christmas, wasn’t enough for me, however. There was too much negativity in that for my liking. I found that I needed to discover my own way of enjoying Christmas, and the last piece of that jigsaw puzzle fell into place last December. As a result, Christmas 2012 was the first one I really enjoyed for quite a few years. And better still, I am now, in my own quiet way, looking forward to celebrating this year.

I’m not going to offer you tips for successful Christmas shopping, how to get your home ready with the minimum effort or how to get all of Christmas dinner cooked at the same time. I’m not even going to suggest how you can survive a day – or several days – with relatives you don’t see for the rest of the year. What I am going to do is share with you how I learned to like Christmas again, let go of the negativity and resistance, and find my own little spark of joy in the middle of all the chaos.

1. Simplify. Several years ago, when Christmas was the last thing I wanted to be involved in, I asked my son what he liked about the festive season. He said, ‘presents, decorations and food.’ I then decided to focus on only those three things, forgetting all the pressures I had taken on to have the house perfectly tidy, go to Christmas events or dress in a certain way. Now that I am learning to like Christmas little by little myself, I can also ask myself the same question. What is important to me? Anything that is not important to me or those closest to me can be dropped. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks, what my friends are doing or what the magazines say. I can also choose – since shopping is one of my least favourite things at the best of times – to buy gifts online as much as possible.
2. Let go of perfectionism. You know those glossy photos in magazines, showing a beautiful house with colour co-ordinated decorations? You know that friend who has all her gifts wrapped before November is over? And you know all the Facebook posts showing Christmas trees adorned with hand-made baubles? Well, if you really enjoy those things, you should do them. But if, like me, you’re not really bothered with how things look, you can’t stand housework and you’re not good at crafts, let them go. Similarly, let go of the idea that your children will have a perfect day, that they will enjoy the nativity play or that your trip to Santa’s grotto will go smoothly. That’s not how life works out. Life is perfectly imperfect and so is Christmas. Families, and children in particular, never behave exactly as you want them to and trying to control things will wear you out and make you unhappy. Let it all be imperfect and find the little moments of joy in each day as it comes.
3. Find what you love. This is my last jigsaw piece. Last year, I realised how important it is, in this temperate climate, that we have a festival in the middle of Winter. The days are ridiculously short, dreary and dark. The weather is cold and the months of sameness stretch out in front of us. Christmas, or the pagan festivities that preceded it, provides light, sparkles, singing and cheerfulness where otherwise those things would be difficult to conjure up. My own favourite Christmas thing is lights, and luckily they are everywhere right from the beginning of December. Since I drive around the countryside a fair bit, I am able to spend my time looking out for pretty lights. Much nearer Christmas Day, when I eventually get around to putting up my own decorations, lights are a priority. If you can’t think of anything you particularly like about Christmas, I invite you to share my love for pretty, twinkly lights. I challenge you not to love them!

That’s it. Keep things simple, resolve to be a recovering perfectionist, and find the one thing you love, then focus on that. Even if you are the most determined bah humbug Christmas criticiser, if you are willing to try those three simple suggestions you can’t fail to find a little joy where previously there was mainly grumbling. You don’t have to like the commercialism, suddenly find plenty of money to spend or invite the housework fairies round; Christmas joy can be discovered right here where we are, if we are only willing to look for it.