Published on 12, July, 2020
Television seems to be full of Christmas adverts now that Halloween’s out of the way. For some reason they’re making me feel really anxious.
Are you looking forward to Christmas?
To be honest I’m anxious about Christmas too. We’ve had a few years where serious things have gone wrong for us during the Christmas period (such as illness etc) and we now associate it with some quite bad memories. So this year we’ve almost considered just ‘not doing Christmas’ at all. But we’re not sure. We’ve considered just doing Christmas completely differently (eg doing a medieval style Christmas (this sounds mad now I write it!) - just so it’s not like any previous Christmas we’ve had. Or doing it on a completely different day, or going away somewhere. I don’t know - deep down I think I feel a bit like forgetting about the whole thing! I used to really like it but now it’s associated with some quite traumatic memories and it’s making the whole thing seem very unappealing. Why does it make you anxious?
That sounds like a really good idea! My family decided to do Christmas somewhat differently when I was growing up and after some arguments with other parts of the family- We ended up going away to Switzerland over Christmas each year and just took it in a very very relaxed way.
I really like the idea of the medieval Christmas - or of mixing it up completely! It doesn't sound crazy to me at all :)
Like you I have some bad memories - I lost my dad and my beloved 22 year old cat around Christmas 3 years ago - and this year I’ll be by myself so I’m worried I might end up feeling very sorry for myself.