CHRISTMAS DOESN'T LIKE ME
It’s not that I don’t like Christmas. It just doesn’t like me.
When I was little, about 8 years old, I awoke early on Christmas Day to discover the wreckage of our tree and presents (what was left of them) strewn around the lounge. At first we blamed the cats, but then realised, to our growing horror, that we’d been burgled. After the initial shock, we all got angry and my older sister pronounced that Santa wasn’t real and that reindeers didn’t eat the cookies I’d put out; she did.
This cast a dark shadow over the festive season, for sure.
Later, as my parents’ relationship crumbled, Christmas became fraught with arguments and long silences – excruciating for a teenager searching for her identity and positive role models.
At 15 ½ , I left home and moved to central London for my first job in a PR firm. London certainly puts on a great show at Christmas, and for a few years I was swept up in the magic of it once again. The Oxford Street lights, the Selfridges window displays with Santa and his Elves, the carol concerts in the parks. My wealthy older boyfriend spoiled me with lavish gifts and we had a wonderful time, despite the fact that our first Christmas turkey was ruined because I forgot to remove the plastic bag of giblets before cooking it, rendering it inedible!
In my mid-twenties, I avoided awkward Christmas family gatherings by volunteering for a charity called Crisis at Christmas. The charity took over abandoned factories and provided food, clothes, shelter and opportunities for homeless Londoners. There I cooked big cauldrons of soup, and caught the Do-Gooding bug.
Unfortunately, one year I experienced my own crisis. The factory was nowhere near a Tube station, so I borrowed a friend’s car and – as an inexperienced driver - accidently put my foot on the accelerator instead of the brake. It did not end well. The car shot down an embankment and landed, nose-first, bang in the middle of a railway track, stopping all trains on that busy line. Fortunately, I walked away with only a few scratches, but my ego was terribly bruised, and my friend was pretty unhappy – the car was a write-off. The next day, the South London Newspaper’s front page story featured an image of the vertical car on the railway line, with the headline “Blonde female driver causes Christmas Eve chaos!” Luckily there was no photo of the blonde.
A year after moving to Australia in 1994, my father called from London to tell me he had cancer. I went back to spend Christmas with him, but the man who tentatively ate his Christmas pud in bed was a shadow of the handsome, strong man I’d loved all my life, and that put the final nail in the Christmas coffin. By January he was gone.
In the years since, I’ve noticed how stressful Christmas is for many people, especially women (who STILL carry the main burden of shopping, gifting, entertaining and cooking). I’ve seen how commercial it’s become (Australians spend up to $11 billion on gifts each year[1]) and the enormous negative impact on the environment (50% of Christmas waste goes into landfill[2]).
So with all of my emotional Christmas baggage, about ten years ago I decided to ‘ban’ Christmas: gifts, turkey, decorations, the whole shebang. And I’ve not regretted it one bit. Have I become a Grinch? Absolutely not! Instead, I spend my month off relaxing, reconnecting with friends, finishing those half-read books, nurturing my body and soul and reflecting on yet another year lived on this beautiful blue planet. Because, despite the things I’ve endured, my misadventures and mishaps, mess-ups and mistakes, I’m still here and in the best place I’ve been for a long time. I put this down to having my health back, my patient and kind husband, having a beautiful soul working with me each day (Georgia) and a sense of purpose – empowering students through BePartnerReady.com®.
Whatever Christmas is for you, I hope it brings you joy and rest. Be kind. Be generous.
Be More and for this month anyway - Do Less. I’ll see you on the other side.
Hailey Cavill-Jaspers
[1] Commonwealth Bank Consumer Spending survey
[2] ABC News Australia
