The season of questions has arrived. It's the time of year when polite inquiries about family, home and Christmas are as common as talking about the weather. Yet seasonal probing creates a predicament for people like me, who are estranged from their family, or those who don't have a festive home to return to.
I fielded my first question this week: "When are you going back?" Now that I'm no longer single, I have a more viable explanation. But there were many years when I didn't have a clue how to explain that I didn't have a place to go back to, that I was the Christmas nomad, a person without an automatic invitation home. It's hard to summarise for people, especially when they are seeking optimism and tales of unity. The process became awkward, for both me and my interrogators – I lied, I told a half truth, I lied again and hoped no two people would compare notes.
These questions, and the cover up, quietly diminished my sense of self-worth. Why wasn't I like everyone else? What was I actually going to do on Christmas day? Assuming everyone else had families as peaceful as those on Christmas adverts amplified my anxiety. I imagined others would be revelling in happiness – tucked up in their childhood beds, conceding losses at Trivial Pursuit with a dazed, tinselled nonchalance. Something convinced me that I was alone in finding Christmas difficult.
But the illusion has finally been broken. In times past, I dismissed my friends when they'd told me family Christmas isn't all that. I brushed off their trivialities with the attitude that at least they had a family to go to. Yet their tearful recollections of festive woes came back to me. How Uncle Brian brought up the affair at Christmas dinner; how Mel's dad had neglected to even thank Mel for the present she'd spent months thinking about; how Lucy's dad took it upon himself to permit her young kids so much chocolate they'd orbited the Christmas tree for days. And so on. I remembered what they said: it's meant to be this happy time, but…
So maybe it's time that marketing relented, and stopped flogging us the family Christmas contentment we aren't all lucky enough to enjoy. Where are the images of the non-traditional Christmas? This may be wishful thinking, but there is much debate about the exploitation of body image insecurity when it comes to the fashion industry. And yet there has been little airtime given to the exploitation of family anxiety in the Christmas industry – an exploitation played out so products are bought to recompense for all that doesn't feel perfect, rendering many uncomfortable if they aren't in Christmas jumpers with an extended family, laughing.
The problem is this: I can't play the retailers' game, I can't buy products to recompense, and neither can tens of thousands of others. To me, Christmas is isolating. No eggnog cupcake that I purchase will ever unify my family. No cracker joke will make us all groan.
For all those that don't have a place to go back to, and are starting to feel the tension, as is common at this time of year, it may be useful to remember that the family Christmas is rarely as perfect as we imagine. And for all those polite interrogators, I beg you to take the functional assumptions off the table – there are a million and one other polite topics to discuss. Family dysfunction is much more widespread than we realise, and for many, this is not the most wonderful time of the year, but a difficult maze of expectations and awkward explanations.
