Unrealistic Festive Expectations
‘How was your Christmas?’ ‘Oh, it was crap, thanks.’
The days following Christmas are, traditionally, a time of intense hibernation. All normal activities — tidying, exercising, doing the washing — are suspended. In our family, we retreat into our cave, ignoring the housework, playing videogames and eating everything within sight even when obviously full. Eventually, we open the curtains, finish up the last of the cheese, and emerge, squinting, into the Outside World.
And we find people. And the number one question that everyone always asks, no matter, what, is this:
‘How was your Christmas?’
I always, always feel the need to answer this question positively. I feel it breaks social convention to say anything other than ‘it was good, thank you.’ (At a push, you can say, ‘it was alright’). It feels like ruining the Christmas magic, somehow, to even admit to myself that it can be anything other than fun and joyful.
I’ve had some rubbish Christmases in the past. Like the time I had a throat infection and one sip of prosecco made me cough so much I had to go back to bed. Or like last year, when I worked in retail and had to work Christmas Eve, Boxing Day, New Years’ Eve and New Years Day, and ended up so run down and exhausted that I got pleurisy. Despite those things, if someone asked me ‘how was your Christmas?’ I would reply ‘it was good, thank you.’ Because that is the right answer.
This Christmas was so bad, however, that it changed my mind.
It started the week before Christmas. Chris got sick, and I mean very sick — the most poorly I’ve ever seen him in the thirteen years we’ve been together. This meant he had to take time off work, which means losing pay. He also got a cough, which he then helpfully passed on to our children. The three of them were so badly affected, it was as though they were having a full-blown conversation via the medium of coughing and spluttering. I ended up either sleeping next to a feverish child, or sleeping on the sofa (and by ‘sleeping’ I mean ‘staring up at the ceiling worrying’).
On Christmas Eve, our son got worse. His temperature rocketed to 40 degrees even after Calpol. We watched him in shifts all night as he coughed and wheezed in the small hours. On Christmas morning, we had a brief moment of joy (present opening) before having to call 111 to get an out of hours doctors appointment. We packed up the car and went to spend a few hours with my parents, my sister, and my niece (all of whom were also poorly. We were determined to be miserable together at least). When it came to strapping the kids into their car seats, my son had a violent coughing fit and promptly threw up all over my nicest coat and scarf, all over the pavement, and all over his shoes (which he found utterly horrifying).
The moment we stepped into the doctors surgery (family history of asthma makes me wary of chest-related illnesses), my son perked up. He was like a different child. At my parents house, he was listless and upset, and ended up drifting in and out of sleep, burning up with a fever. At the out-of-hours? He was happy. He was funny. He ran around in circles singing the theme tune to Wallace and Gromit in between coughs (‘Da-da-da — COUGH! — da-da-da-da-daaaa! Wheeze, cough’) and he beamed at the doctor when we were called in.
Why, why do children insist on doing this? It’s like they’re purposefully trying to make you look like an idiot.
Anyway, we went home, reassured that he didn’t have any signs of a chest infection. And he threw up again.
On Boxing Day, we drove to my sister-in-laws house in Wales (having pre-warned them about the germs). Both kids seemed much better, and my husband even seemed a bit brighter. Then the inevitable happened:
I got sick.
I mean, it was going to happen eventually. I really, really tried not to catch it. I disinfected every touchable surface in the house — light switches, toilet flushes, you name it. I washed my hands constantly. I made things out of garlic and ginger and rosemary and I drank honey and lemon. I even spent £10 on a bottle of Sambucol, which is disappointingly not at all like sambuca (it’s actually a thick, sickeningly sweet vitamin supplement that is meant to ward off colds).
I did all these things. And then my son, in the midst of a loving cuddle, coughed directly into my mouth.
Game over. On Boxing Day, it got me. I spent most of the day lying on the sofa in a daze.
So that’s it: basically, the whole festive period was completely rubbish.
I mean, we had some good moments. We got to spend a lot of time together. I spent a lot of time with my daughter, assembling her new toys, playing board games, introducing her to The Sims. So that was nice. The kids were, on the whole, extremely well behaved and very grateful for their presents.
I got to eat a lot of chocolate and crisps and I drank a fair amount of rum.
But really? It could have been better. It could have been a whole lot better.
I think I set my expectations far too high for Christmas. It will always lead to disappointment. The house is never as tidy as I want it to be, someone always has an argument, someone gets sick (or, in the case of this year, everyone gets sick at once). Something always goes wrong at the last minute. I need to take that idea of a perfect Christmas and lob it out of the window. Next Christmas, I’m going to set my expectations extremely low. I’ll resign myself to it being disappointing. And then maybe, just maybe, it will turn out to be better than I planned.
Is that a bad way to live? It’s like the polar opposite of The Secret. Instead of manifesting joy, I am mentally preparing myself for an onslaught of crap.
Someone asked us the question yesterday.
‘How was your Christmas?’
I opened my mouth to reply ‘it was alright, thanks’ when Chris butted in with, ‘it was awful. Yours?’
‘Oh,’ they said, brightening. ‘Actually, mine was awful too!’
And they bonded a little bit because of it.
Hmm.
Maybe I should start answering this question honestly after all.