Why Christmas was Shitmas
Tis the season to have meltdowns
Let me say, at the outset, that Palestine has never been far from my mind over Christmas. I felt enormous sorrow, as many of us do, thinking about what it must have been like for a Palestinian child to wake up (if they even managed to get some rest in the first place) on Christmas morning this year. While in the context of what’s happening in the world, we are all incredibly fortunate to be safe and warm this Christmas - and it’s a perspective shift we sometimes need - this piece will be about the relative shitshow that these few high pressure days can be, or was for me. I do think it’s important, even now, to hold space for our difficult days; if we shame ourselves into thinking we have no right to voice our respective challenges, because they seem frivolous (which they arguably are) or we appear ungrateful or insensitive, we run the risk of compromising our mental health. If we don’t voice our stress and instead we suppress it, it can lead to all kinds of inner turmoil. So while you can and should be mindful, aware and concerned about what’s going on, you can still honour whatever it is your feeling. Or at the very least you can do that here, on my Substack.
I’ve been in the game long enough to know, logically, that 99% of what I consume on social media is curated to present an aspirational version of life. However, just knowing that behind each glossy grid pic you’ll find families arguing and kids so amped up on excitement they’re behaving like little shits, is never enough to stop the social comparison from happening. It happens regardless because that’s how we’re designed: to measure ourselves against what impression we get of others. It’s never harder than at Christmas (when the Bullshitometer goes into overdrive) and there’s no pressure quite like that of Christmas Day when there’s kids involved. They’ve had it built up for them for the last two months, they’ve probably had the threat of Santa coming or not coming levelled at them a fair few times too (unless you’re some kind of perfect parent who manages not to do that), their food groups have been reduced to gingerbread and syrup and their little brains go into utter overdrive.