In the book, for each aspect of relationships I explore, I invite readers to consider the following questions:

• What are the rules about this thing which are often taken-for-granted (by our wider culture, our communities, the people in our lives, and ourselves)?
• Why might it be useful to question those rules?
• What might we replace them with if they weren’t working so well for us?
• What would it be like to embrace uncertainty and to approach this thing without any rules?

Given that the festive season is nearly upon us, and it’s a tough time of year for many people, let’s apply this approach to that. I’ll work through the questions with some of the common social rules that I’m aware of in relation to the festive season, but you might want to consider different rules that apply more to your situation.

It’s important to be mindful that we all have different experiences of this season based on, for example, our family situation, our faith (if we have one), our cultural background, our generation and age, our mobility and health, past experiences over this period and more. That’s why the intersectional approach (which I’ve tried to take in the new edition of Rewriting the Rules) is a vital starting point.

What are the rules?

The three common cultural rules that sprung to my mind when I thought about the festive season were:

1. You must see your family at this time of year, probably in a very specific way such as staying all together in one place for a period of time, or zooming around making sure you see everyone.
2. You have to show your love for each other through exchanging expensive gifts which prove how much you really know this person and their tastes.
3. The festive season is ‘the most wonderful time of the year’ so you must be happy and have a merry time (and definitely not be a Scrooge!).

Why question the rules?

So why might it be useful to question those rules?

1. In relation to family many, if not most, of us have complicated relationships with our families, perhaps being estranged or distant from some or all of them, or simply not having any remaining family. Some people find that they always conflict with their family in unhelpful ways when they spend an extended period together. Some enjoy spending time with family but just find the attempt to pack all of them in to the same short space of time very stressful, for example if they feel they have to see the families of themselves and their partner or partners, or all of their extended family who live in different places. This is compounded for people who have little vacation time and really need to spend what little they have relaxing.
2. Turning to expensive gifts, this recent article by George Monbiot is a good summary of the toll that – often unwanted novelty – presents can take on the planet and on the human lives of those involved in their production. Also many of us simply cannot afford expensive gifts due to the impact of the extended period of austerity we’ve been living through. And, even if we can, the pressure to find the ‘perfect’ gift to communicate our love can be intense and stressful.
3. Finally, on feeling happy, many of us actually have good reasons to find the festive period emotionally tough, due to the aforementioned stressors and more. The time away from work – and the turn of the year – can get us reflecting on our careers in ways that are challenging, and time with our nearest and dearest can similarly prompt us to look closely on our relationships. Many people have painful anniversaries at this time of year – of bereavements and break-ups for example – and find that the festive rituals, sights, sounds, etc. can trigger distressing or traumatic memories.

What alternative rules are possible?

Given all these reasons to question the cultural rules of the festive season, what might we put in their place if we want to make some changes?

1. We might get more intentional about who we see and how we see them over this period. For example, many people have found ways to shift family rules, such as deciding to see different family members on alternating years; having different days as their ‘Xmas day’, ‘New Year’s Eve’, etc. with different close people or groups; going away alone for the holidays – or doing charity work or a retreat at this time – in order to disrupt an ingrained family habit; or staying nearby but not actually with family so they can dip in and out of the festive fun depending on the parts which work for them.
2. We could agree some limits on gift-giving with the people in our life. For example some people decide to just exchange small tokens, or to do ‘Secret Santa’ where you only have to get something for one person in a group or family. You can share wishlists online so that people know what you actually want, or give money to a person’s favourite charity instead of a gift. You might also consider making handmade gifts instead of buying them, or giving people tokens for an experiences they can have with you in future (e.g. tokens for a day out together, cooking them a meal, or giving them a footrub). You could decide to only ever give ‘I saw this and thought of you’ type gifts, rather than exchanging gifts at a particular time of year.
3. In relation to feelings, all of that pressure to have a happy, merry, wonderful time paradoxically means that we’re less likely to experience the festive season in that way. You’ve probably experienced this yourself: when you put a lot of pressure on a specific day or period to be a positive experience it often feels less so because you can’t be present to what’s happening, and any minor mishap can feel like a crisis. Trying to make it a positive experience for absolutely everyone, and taking responsibility for other people having a ‘wonderful time’, turns up the pressure even more, perhaps meaning that you end up exhausted, or exploding, or missing out on the experience. One alternative to this is to think about all of the feelings that the festive period brings up for you, and to consider what your self-care needs are in relation to these. Do you need to factor in some time alone? What kinds of support might be helpful for you? What might you let other people know about things that you find challenging at this time of year?

Embracing uncertainty

Most of the examples I just gave were about shifting the existing rules, or replacing them with other rules, but still with a sense that we need some rules around the festive period, and perhaps it’s not really okay to step away from those taken-for-granted rules entirely. I want to say here that it absolutely is fine to decide not to see family at all, or not to exchange any gifts, or to refuse to put a happy face on it, if those things don’t work for you. What might embracing uncertainty around the festive period look like, if we stepped away from rules entirely?

1. In relation to family, you could reflect on Armistead Maupin’s concept of logical family. For many people – particularly those in LGBTQ+ communities – biological family are not our closest people. It really is okay to think about who – if anyone – we want to share this time with. Could you then open up an open, consensual conversation with your nearest and dearest about what is important for each of you around this period, and any limits around what you have the capacity for, or want to offer? Harriet Lerner writes very helpfully about how to do this kind of mutual, consensual communication if you find it hard.
2. In the book that Jacqui Gabb and I wrote together, The Secrets of Enduring Love, we drew on Gary Chapman’s concept of love languages. This is the idea that people like to express love, and have it expressed to them, in different ways. Giving and receiving gifts is only one of those ways. Again you could open up a conversation with nearest and dearest about how you each enjoy expressing love and having it expressed, and what your limits are around this. You could figure out between you what will work best for all concerned – whether or not it is linked to the festive period. For example, it might be be about writing a list of all the things you’re grateful to somebody for, or agreeing to share a certain period of time together, or doing something particular with them.
3. Finally, what about making the festive period a time during which all of your feelings are welcome, rather than only the ones our culture labels ‘positive’. Maybe you could share this idea with other people in your life too. You could even make time or rituals around allowing grief, regret, fear, and frustration, for example, alongside the more conventional festive feelings of peace, hope, love, merriment, etc. You could make the movie Inside Out one of your festive favourites because it’s such a great explanation of why this is important. My zine Staying with Feelings, might be helpful if this sounds like a useful approach to you. You’re absolutely allowed to embrace the ‘bah humbug’ as well as the ‘winter wonderland’.

The post Rewriting the Rules of the Festive Season appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

After these journeys, Scrooge is returned to the present day: Christmas day. He is so appreciative of being given another chance that he delights in everything that previously would have elicited a ‘bah, humbug’. I would argue that one thing we can take from the story – whether or not we celebrate Christmas ourselves – is the value of being present. In understanding ourselves, in really seeing other people for what they are, and in remembering the impermanence of life, we can return to the present more fully than before in a way that is better for ourselves and for others around us.

Holiday seasons, however, are often times at which we are least able, or encouraged, to be present.

Jamie Heckert argues that we generally spend a lot of our time either in the future or in the past. When we are in the future we try to predict how things will work out or to force them to fit a certain ideal that we have. We are not in the present because we are too busy thinking about the next step or overall goal. When we are in the past we focus on attempting to become ‘the person who has done that’. The present is just a means to the end of building up a set of perfect memories that we can look back upon.

During the holiday times this future/past way of being is often exacerbated. We may spend the build up to the period dreaming up hopes and expectations for how it will be. For me, this year, this meant clinging on to an idealised notion of days relaxing by the fire to get me through the last few weeks of work. In such ways we often fix upon the past (the rituals that we do every year which must happen identically for it to be a ‘good’ holiday) as well as the future (how great the holidays will be once we have finally done everything).

There are many problems with this. For a start such fixed ideas are difficult if the people we share the holidays with have different ideas. In my case, for example, it will be problematic if their ideal of the holidays (which has built up just as intensely) is of getting out in the snowy hills, or of seeing lots of friends and family. We may find ourselves in blazing rows with partners, friends or family members as both parties feel the other is ruining our perfect Christmas, New Year, or whatever. Incidentally I have found that labelling one’s loved one a ‘Grinch’ under such circumstances is a particularly unhelpful way to go.

Another problem is that this rigid way of approaching holidays is inflexible to change. If anything happens to disrupt the usual festive rituals or our idealised fantasy (such as illness, travel problems, or lack of money) we may find it hard to adjust and so either lash out or plunge into despair. There is intense pressure on particular days to go well, such that even minor set-backs such as burnt potatoes or a duplicated present can feel as though they have spoiled everything.

We can also spend the festive days themselves stuck in past or future. If we are stuck in the past we might find ourselves constantly comparing this event to previous years to determine how it measures up (which is likely to be unfavourable if we are comparing it to a time when we were just enjoying it rather than worrying about whether we were having a good time). If tough stuff happened at this time of year previously we often find that it haunts us, or if things were particularly wonderful previously (perhaps with an ex partner or friend) then that can be equally difficult. We can also be in the past in a memory-building kind of way, spending the whole day trying to engineer perfect moments like Bill Murray does in Groundhog Day, or constantly capturing everything on camera or documenting it on facebook or twitter (not that these things are bad per se, but if we spend our whole time thinking ‘this would make a great blog entry’ we’re probably not completely present to ourselves or to the people around us!)

If we spend such days stuck in the future we might keep thinking about all the stuff we have to fit into the day, planning it in so much detail that we never actually enjoy what we are doing at the time. We open the presents worrying about getting the meal ready on time, we eat the meal thinking about all the washing up we’ll have to do, we wash up concerned whether there’ll be time for a walk while it is light, etc. etc. Or we may focus on the longer term future: how many more days we have off before we have to go back to work, or whether we’ll all be able to get together like this again next year.

Of course the day on which many of us become exceptionally future-focused is New Year’s Eve as not only is there a heap of pressure to be having the most wonderful time when midnight rolls around, but we are also focused on all the things we plan to do to make ourselves better people in the coming year. New Years resolutions easily become a way of focusing on a future perfected self rather than the perfectly acceptable self that we are at the moment, as well as becoming another stick to beat ourselves with as we inevitably struggle to match up to the ideals that we have set for ourselves.

An alternative to such resolutions might be a commitment to aspire to something, with the gentleness and awareness to appreciate that we won’t manage it all the time and that this is not just another thing to be hard on ourselves about.

I’m suggesting here that something we might commit to over the festive season and beyond is to be present to ourselves and to other people: to gently bring ourselves back from past-ruminations and future-planning to the present moment, however it is. For example, we might realise that even if it is New Year’s Eve we’re actually feeling tired and antisocial and would rather not party tonight. We might see the thought that went into the gift we’ve been given even if it isn’t what we were hoping for. We might find perfection in an unexpected moment such as washing up with our siblings or curling up alone with a leftover sandwich.

This blog entry is dedicated to my brother who, years ago, infamously excused his not having bought anyone a gift by saying ‘my love is your present’. Of course a Christmas never now goes by without this line being trotted out at some point, much to his embarrassment. But he was actually onto something. To paraphrase his original words, whatever gifts we actually give to each other, perhaps we could keep in mind the idea that ‘the present is your present’.

Find out more:

Being present is an idea which is common in Buddhist philosophies and the mindfulness therapies which are based on them. You can read more about this in my book Mindful Counselling & Psychotherapy.

The post Christmas presence: Being present over the festive season appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.