Not now, Christmas. Can't you see I'm crying?
something to read while you hide from your relatives in the bathroom!
It’s ok if you’re just not up for it this year. Things have been bloody awful. Many of us are being swallowed alive by personal/global/political grief. The economy is fucked. People are in panic. We as a society, and culture, have never felt lonelier. Shagging is at an international, all time low. The will to paint on a smile in an ill-fitting Rudolph jumper… is faltering.
I want to be clear, I love the idea of making space for reflection, and celebration of life and love, if you can muster the energy. (Gratitude is a destination after all, and we are all arriving there at our own time.) But I simply remain baffled by the pressure induced by this time of year, and the human capacity to turn absolutely anything, into a weapon. Even a day. Even a day can be used to hurt ourselves, and others.
Don’t tell capitalism I said this, but for those of us who aren’t religious. This is just a… Wednesday.
It doesn’t have to hold any power over you.
You don’t have to meet any expectations. It’s an arbitrary cultural phenomena, to see this day as a marker of your success whatsoever. It’s just a Wednesday.
You don’t owe anyone, thin, pretty, rich, successful, married, babies, popular, fun, stable or happy. Just like on any other day of the year. It’s just a Wednesday.
Today doesn’t have to be a projection of what others want to see in you. Today defines nothing. It means nothing. It’s just a Wednesday.
It doesn’t especially matter what your exes are doing today, just like it didn’t last Wednesday…
There is no reason for it to be normalized as the Judgment Olympics. You shouldn’t be taking deep breaths, while putting on an emotional bullet proof vest, as you brace for a shower of unsolicited opinions and personal questions. It’s. Just. A. Wednesday.
You reserve the right to resist the onslaught of projections. You don’t have to live up to shit. You don’t have to answer questions around a table, that would have felt invasive for someone to randomly call you up and ask on any other day. You don’t even have to be there. So if this is going to be how you spend your day off, it shouldn’t feel like work. What if you instead just: Choose comfort. Choose chaos. Choose freedom. Choose violence.
Someone online today told me:
Why is it normal for us to field strange questions and behaviors from people who overestimate the depth of their familiarity with us? Why is it on us to manage their lack of etiquette? Why is it normal for the amount we eat to be monitored? Why do they get to make it weird, and we have to smooth the edges of their barbed presence? Wouldn’t it be fun to drag them down to sit with us, in the strange atmosphere they have created? Wouldn’t it be fun to sustain eye contact and return the squirm extended unto us, back to sender? Wouldn’t it be fun to feel safe and empowered in your own home?
Subversives live longer. (This isn’t actually backed up by statistics, it just felt cool to say.)
I also want to flag my despair over how many of us will know better, but still somehow forget that social media is a lie, it’s a presentation of the shiny world we build on top of the shaky foundations of our childhood trauma, insecurity and broken hearts. We will see other people’s online Christmases, we will compare it to ours. We will see a snapshot of a filtered group smile, and presume there are no snide remarks, tears, drunken confessions, and debates over trans people happening at those tables. We will think their turkey wasn't dry. (It fucking was.) We will think they didn't have to medicate themselves half blind in order to make it to the end of the day. (They fucking did.) We will find a way to confirm that we have in some way, failed.
Look, some people will have an amazing day, they won’t cry, they won’t feel incredibly stressed. Those people are largely under the age of 8. But those of us who struggle, are the rule, not the exception. This should be a day of ease. Of authenticity. Of relief. But for most of the people I speak to, this day is anything but.
Today’s Substack is just a little reminder that It doesn’t have to be that way. Christmas doesn’t have to be a performance. It’s not a mark of your growth on the doorframe.
Breathe. It’s just a Wednesday.
Sending love, strength, and solidarity.
Live. Laugh. Fart.
Jam x
Christmas pfft!
It’s Wednesday and I had planned to be alone, quiet, sleeping and eating or not, whatever I felt like doing.
Instead, I’ve been asked by Oranga Tamariki (NZ) a govt department, to have a just turned 15 year old girl stay with me as her parents need some respite! A young life that has been through utter trauma, living on streets in India until aged 7, now with me for a couple of weeks. We’ve just been for a silent walk, it’s huge, she wants to be with her adoptive family but she’s stuck with me. We’re both doing our best and I’m loving her guts in her vulnerability of being with someone who is a complete stranger.
For me, it’s a Wednesday, for her it’s a day that is reminding her of what she’s missing. She told me she trusts me, that’s my amazing gift to have been given today. I’ve given her a safe space and spaghetti, done her washing with no demands made of her to do anything other than to just breathe, no judgements. Life on a Wednesday can be and is many different things for us all. Kia kaha (be strong) and aroha mai (love to you all)
Very much not a fan of this time of year. I never liked it, it all feels fake, it's pageantry. I stopped celebrating when I stopped drinking because I literary can't pretend to enjoy it. I am far better off now I don't. But I still get the guilt texts from my mum and her self imposed sadness that I'm alone at Christmas.
For the last two years all I see is injustice and hypocrisy in relation to all things Christmas. I'm not Christian and even I can see that everything about Christmas is wrong. But it is just a Wednesday and soon it'll be January.