Topic Tuesday // Is it okay to ignore Christmas? // 13 Dec. 7pm AEDT

To treat Christmas time as a reminder that it's okay to ignore all the hustle and bustle. Trying not to get caught up in the over the top celebrations.This is my feelings about Christmas

Yes, for some it should be absolutely OK to ignore Christmas. I hate all noted occasions including my birthday. There are just too many traumatic memories associated with them. Especially for me, New year. Rather than a time where new adventures and opportunities are looked forward to, it's a time of grief and loss for a life that should have been.

I think it's perfectly fine to ignore christmas unless you have children, because than you're ruining it for them (of course depending on your religious beliefs). I personally hate christmas. I love everything leading up to it - the shopping, the people, decorations, music and presents but the actual day makes me sick. And i think that's because when I was only 10 years old i lost my dad a week before christmas, he was only 34 years old. I never realised until now being in my early 20s that I hate Christmas and that might be why. I prefer to just sleep through the day

I will be working for Lifeline on Christmas morning. There will be lots of people feeling pretty isolated, but as mentioned, not everyone will be necessarily will be otherwise having a great time. How do you think that I could put this across without invalidating people?

I have a fantasy Christmas. In my fantasy I’m not surrounded by loved ones, stuffed full of turkey/seafood, the floor littered by presents and my sides aching with laughter. No, in my fantasy Christmas, it’s just me, a jug of Pims, a tin of Quality Street chocolates and a line up of movies from whatever decade I’m choosing to celebrate. 80’s ideally. I only ever got that Christmas once. Living overseas in my twenties I was free from family obligations and commercial pressures. Twenty years later I still reflect on that Christmas fondly.

These days, instead of indulging my fantasy, I reluctantly embrace as few traditions as I can get away with to appease my partner and please my daughter. My enthusiasm is palpably forced though and gets me a regular telling off by my 10 year old. Without religious faith to give the day meaning, I just find no value in forced togetherness combined with mass financial stress.

So when a colleague wrote this blog recently, I knew I’d found a kindred spirit and thought that maybe there were a few more out there. Reading through some Christmas threads earlier today I also came across a post from @Appleblossom which confirmed it. She said 'it’s like other days but with slightly better food'. Amen. So I know there is at least one more hold-out.

So who else is planning to ignore Christmas this year and who, like me, wishes they could?

I would love to ignore Xmas, especially now my kids are older and there isn't the same expectation to give them a million presents and Santa and all that. But my partner loves it, and often gives me grief each year for not "making an effort" to make it nice for him. I have tried, I've done lunches with inlaws and all that rubbish, but I'm just tired of it. I loved my xmases growing up, great Italian ones where we went to Nonna's and stayed there and it was food all day and intermittent tv watching and naps. As an adult and having to appease partners and kids, it's really sucked the joy out of it for me, and now I feel like I've paid my dues and should be excused. I have no religious beliefs, nothing to make the day special for me. But how do you get to do what you want, when there are others giving you pressure to pretend to be happy?

Hello @YogaBear, @BlueBay, @Amaya, @BossandSqueezy, @Bimby2, @Lillel123, @TAB, @Shaz51, @greenspace, @Former-Member, @Former-Member, @Muggins and @Brand-Newday

Hope you can join us for our chat tonight. I promise not to be completely bah humbug as I know that Christmas is actually more complex for a lot of people. It can be a time of feeling isolated even amongst a crowd, of being re-traumatised by reminders of early wounds, and of fresh grief over the loss of loved ones.

But whatever your reason for not feeling joyous about what's ahead of us (tinsel - why????) hopefully we can brain-storm some approaches to make it easier.

Hi @SwearyCyn, I'm completely with you. Christmas is for children in my book and I too had wonderful times as a kid. Once my daughter is old enough I'm planning to stage a fight back and reclaim at least some of it for my pims, movie and chocolate loving self. But you've given me pause for thought. Are you saying that the pressure is never off to don a santa hat and pretend to enjoy yourself?