We have images in our head about what Christmas should look like. Many of these are imported from the Northern hemisphere: snowmen, families in ugly jumpers huddled around the fireplace, three ghosts breaking and entering in the middle of the night. Others are more homegrown, like the Chrisco lady and whatever Shortland Street cliffhanger you found most traumatising as a child (me? Van through the hospital, hands down).
A common theme, regardless of where you’re from or how you celebrate Christmas, is people. We’re told, again and again, that Christmas means being around people, and that being around those people is joyful, merry and a chance to let go of the year’s trouble and come together in community.
Outside of the realm of wacky Christmas films, the troubles of the season are not communicated in popular imagery. We don’t get ads for people stressed out about trying to cater the family Christmas, deciding who buys the Christmas crackers, who makes the stuffing, who calls grandma the taxi when she’s had a few too many gins. What if you have multiple locations to make it to over the day? What if you have a racist uncle? What if Christmas is not the most joyous time of year, but something you spend stressing about the moment you put away the Halloween trees until the trauma subsides in maybe the middle of January, just as you’re going back to work?
May I introduce a genuine option to those who find Christmas stressful? A solo Christmas.
Last year, I made the decision on a whim to spend Christmas by myself. I had options – both a humble brag and a stress that I have not done anything to ostracise myself from the Christmases of my own family or others – but it all felt like so much stress and effort. 2023 was a big year, what with working in a newsroom during an election and dealing with a very sick family member, and the start of 2024 was looking to be no less big so… I decided that the 25th would just be a day off.
What did I do? I did minimal prep: just a few bottles of wine and the ingredients for a glorious slow cook bolognese that required less attention than the average cactus plant. I downloaded Final Fantasy 7 Remake to my PS5; the video game equivalent of a warm Christmas meal to me.
On the day, I turned my phone on loud lest anybody needed refuge from their own Christmases. I waited until noon to crack open the first bottle of wine – you have to have some standards. I put the bolognese on the stove. I cranked up Final Fantasy 7 Remake.
And I had a really lovely day, like any other lovely day off. Except everywhere is closed and a lot of people are posting photos of people opening presents while wearing Santa hats to their stories.
By about 7pm, I was one bolognese down, two bottles of wine in, and however many hours in Final Fantasy 7 Remake. I went to bed not long after, and woke up to just another day. Christmas done, Christmas clocked, until next year.
There’s another factor to me choosing to have a solo Christmas, however, and it’s not a happy one!
Christmas was a big part of my calendar for the first two decades of my life. Those images I mentioned above? My family Christmas down to a tee. Hallmark could take notes from the Christmases we put together. It was global fam and global, fam.
However, for the past decade, I’ve been at the (gorgeous) behest of many people inviting me to their Christmases, invitations gratefully and humbly received. Without getting into details, family Christmas was taken away from me in a way that felt both torturously gradual and brutally quick until it was, as Carly Rae Jepsen said in her underrated 2019 Party for One. (And, for the record, can we retire the euphemism “lost” when somebody dies? As though a survivor might have somehow misplaced their loved one.)
For that decade, I tried to find my own family Christmas in others – and it simply wasn’t to be. I have been welcomed in by the most beautiful people I’ve ever known, treated as family, and held so gorgeously on the day (and otherwise) that it felt as easy as breathing. But it still wasn’t family Christmas.
While it wasn’t intentional, doing my own Christmas, creating my own tradition, felt like properly letting go of the ideal family Christmas and being honest with myself. It’s never going to be that Christmas again, and stepping into another family, however beautiful, isn’t going to change that.
Creating my own Christmas, with my own wines, my own bolognese (every man thinks his own bolognese is the best, I am sorry to not be exempt from this aspect of toxic masculinity), and my own video game felt healing in some way. An acceptance that Christmas was not ever going to be the same again.
Which is… honestly a fairly bleak reason to do solo Christmas! But, if the idea even remotely appeals to you, for whatever reason, I’d recommend it. A day off to spend however you want to? Honestly, it’s a dream. Watch what you want, cook what you want (or don’t cook, but try not to make someone else’s Christmas day worse by relying on their labour), drink what you want, talk to who you want. Self-determination is the weighted blanket of comfort, reader.
The truth is – unless you’re a child, in which case you’re very unlikely to have the choice to pick your own Christmas – Christmas is just another party. Another gathering. Another day. No matter how much your toxic family member might hang over your head that you’re “ruining Christmas”, Christmas is truly unruinable by choosing to spend it by yourself.
Is a solo Christmas something I plan to do forever? No. I might actually never do it again, depending on how I feel around the 25th. But the one time I did it? A true dream, given the circumstances. If the idea remotely appeals to you, give it a shot. If you regret it? There’s always next Christmas.
