This is a long post, I'm chattering away like the old men in the cafe again.
The thing with Christmas is, it's not about alcohol, don't let anyone tell you that it is or insist you drink, if they do, get away from them, you deserve better. Christmas doesn't even need to be about parties, they are a nice option rather than something it kills you to be left out of. Look after yourself.
I was once given some advice by a good person. I was facing another difficult Christmas and I asked 'Why does everyone else get to have fun and have a good time and not be alone at Christmas?'
She said to me 'It's an illusion, not everyone is having a good Christmas, there are many people fearful, unhappy, lonely, getting into debt in order to provide Christmas for their loved ones, suffering violence, facing homelessness, family fights, breakups, and many many more problems. All you can do is try to make some Christmas for yourself as best you can'. She was right, and I'll talk about making Christmas later.
That Christmas, I had to flee where I was, running down the road in the snow with no shoes on, utterly broken, suffering devastating and lasting damage, and there was nowhere to go, no food, nothing but huge pain. I crept into a church left unlocked after Mass, and drank Holy Water from the font because I was so thirsty. The termperature was minus 10 and blizzards. I was as helpless as the Baby Jesus when He was born. I couldn't make much of that Christmas, but I have never forgotten what that wise lady said to me, which helped me to understand that Christmas simply isn't good for everyone every year. Christmas is a time of year, the same as May 9th or October 11th, it's a time. And we cannot produce a good Christmas every year, and what is a good Christmas? Do we have to travel back to old times with thick snow and everything sparkling perfect in the way films and videos depict it? Life is changing and so is Christmas, some elements stay the same, company, food, music, lights and decorations, church for some of us, gifts, parties, and so on, but we can have autonomy and make Christmas, the season, more flexible to suit us, we can make it more ours, and we can be reminded that other people aren't all having a perfect Christmas.
Now, humour break, let me tell you about last Christmas, I hope you find it as funny as I now do, it wasn't at the time, it was mad.
Ireland has a shortage of dentists. I was living in Dublin but house sitting at Killaloe in County Clare at the beginning of December last year and I realised, after a lot of telling myself to stop being fussy and weak, that I was in agony from a toothache, a molar, one of them big back teef. There were not dentists available in Dublin, so I sat there in Kilaloe, enjoying the stunning view across Lough Derg, and I searched for emergency dental treatment. I found Dublin Dental Hospital, a teaching hospital for Trinity College. I had a medical card so I was entitled to free treatment and I asked the hospital, unsure, if I could attend their emergency department. They told me I could, but I may or may not be deemed an emergency.
I came home to Dublin and into another house sit for a family who were going for a long break to their family in the USA, and I attended the dental hospital emergency department. They deemed me an emergency very quickly and had me admitted for day surgery, a complex extraction. An extraction like that is a major job and I needed stitches and was told to rest up and be very careful. 'Fine' I thought 'It's a few days before Christmas and all I will be doing is relaxing with television and writing, walking the dogs I'm minding, and going to church'.
Yeah, right. The three dogs I was minding weren't trained, had to stay on the lead, and had no garden at their little house, so I had to take them out frequently. And one of them was an escape artist who never came back if she escaped. She got away from me, there was no one around to help, and I had to chase her, really chase her, she was a lurcher by the way and she wanted to eat as many squirrels as possible before I caught her. A few hours of huge stress and effort and I got her. The tooth socket was bleeding heavily though, I nearly ended up back in the dental hospital. I had to contact them for advice, on the afternoon of the Friday before the Christmas weekend.
To be honest, I was happier to be recovering from a major dental operation over Christmas than I would have been if I'd been in pain over Christmas and I had a roof over my head and everything I needed to aid recovery, rather than being on the streets. Now let me tell you something, I was homeless while I did these house sits. I have done house sitting for years and am well referenced, but house sitting now got me off the streets at Christmas, literally, yes really, I would have been on the streets for Christmas without that house sit. So there I was, Christmas day with these rather lively dogs, first thing, I walked them down along the docks and back first thing, needing to get showered and go down to the RDS for the Christmas Day Community Meal - if you are alone this Christmas, it's worth looking up community Christmas events by the way - anyway, I got home with the dogs, hurrying to shower, dress and go, put the key in the lock, and the lock broke, the door wouldn't open. Christmas day, stuck outside the house, three dogs getting restless and mad and I needed to be showered and dressed and off to the RDS asap. And guess what? I didn't have my phone with me, it was in the house!
Thank God for the neighbours, going out to do their charity walk, that one in Ireland where people walk a short distance on Christmas Day for charity. They saw my distress and came over, and tried and tried to help me to open the door before giving up as there was no hope. They fortunately had phone numbers for the family and the emergency contact family member of the people I was house and pet sitting for and they called him and went off, leaving me alone with three furious dogs.
In the meantime I managed to get into the house. There was a small glass panel among the door panels and I could see it had been removed before, someone had been locked out before. I carefully removed the panel and tried the lock from inside, and to my relief, it unlocked and were in! I went to the shower, and at that moment the emergency contact turned up, I recounted everything, the poor man had been on the northside (the other side of Dublin) with his girlfriend, just trying to survive Christmas himself, and here he was after a confusing phone message and he arrived to find I'd got into the house. He kindly took the dogs for a longer walk while I showered, and then he dropped me off at the RDS, it was a better outcome of a nearly ruined day. I was treated like a Princess at the RDS and surrounded by friends old and new, it was a fantastic Christmas Day and I was even given a lift home, laden down with gifts and very happy, to rest, watch films and write, and of course walk those dogs again. To me, it was a good Christmas despite everything. It's a question of seeing the good in it. The lock itself had been very badly fitted and it breaking was the fault of the person fitting it, it was just luck it waited until Christmas Day to break, the door had another lock and so the house was secure until the locksmith arrived a few days later, the glass panel was easy enough to secure.
As I write this, it's a beautiful Sunday in December, we survived Storm Darragh without losing power out here. I'm going to Mass with with my friend shortly, and I'm just thinking about old friends and Christmas.
I've lost two friends at Christmas, five years apart, both from cancer. One friend lived with cancer for 5 years and tried everything, including drug trials, but she died in the end. The second friend was already dying of cancer when she was diagnosed, and I remain angry with the medical practice who were also my medical practice and persistently failed me as well, they kept sending her away and treating her like a malingerer, as they did with me, she was dying by the time they actually took her seriously (In my case they never took me seriously but I proved them wrong, but that's another story), so anyway, my friend was dying when she was diagnosed in the October, and the last time I saw her alive was Christmas Day evening, after dinner and dog walks, she gave me a hug and a kiss and said goodbye, and that was the last time I saw her alive. She was loved and she lived a lot of life, she and I met because we were volunteers together in a charity shop, a cancer care shop. Now, let me talk about my first friend who had died of cancer at Christmas 5 years before.
My friend was hugely popular, she knew everyone in the village and everyone in the town and everyone everywhere in between. She was everything, she was in the choir in the village, she was in the choir in the cathedral, she was head of floral art at the church, she was head of everything, she was on every committee, she did everything, knew everything, and she had a family, a big close family and extended family, she was full of life and always smiling, laughing, talking loudly with everyone and grabbing my hand as she talked to everyone when I came over to her after church. She was a good friend to me when I was still young and struggling badly with the after-effects of my childhood, she would send me texts saying 'Just hold my hand' if she knew I was facing challenges. I loved my friend and I always remember her smiling.
She died naturally one Christmas after years of fighting, seeking new treatments, praying and sending newsletters to us all about her cancer. She drifted into sleep and stopped waking up. She was at peace with the world and looking forward to meeting Jesus. Her funeral was so well-attended that a marquee had to be put up outside the church with a video link.
There's a lot more to the story than I'm telling you here, but I remember my two friends dying at Christmas as another Christmas approaches, but I remember without breaking down with grief, because time has passed, life has moved on dramatically since those deaths, new friends have come and gone and stayed. I loved those two friends, and they will remain in my memory and in my heart. For me, Christmas isn't marred by their deaths, but the memories will be part of my Christmas. The memories of those two friends and Christmases spent with them.
I'm just going to share something about the friend who battled cancer for 5 years. She was popular and very well known, was part of so much. But I was away overseas for a long time after her death. I came back and went to visit her grave. The small square memorial stone where her ashes were placed. Despite her popularity and the many family, friends, clubs and societies, her little memorial stone was overgrown and with just a dead primrose in a pot from the spring. She had been so popular in life, so loved, so special, but people had moved on, kept her memory but finished grieving, to different degrees.
Suicide to 'Make someone pay' or to make someone feel guilty for life or to spite someone or even as a result of unkind things they've said, doesn't pay off. Because no matter how popular, or loved or special someone is, when they die, people may grieve or feel sad or sorry, but eventually they move on, and then the person who died simply isn't there. It is better to live, and live life to the fullest that we can, because this life is all we know and we have to make the best of it.
If you can't make a Christmas for yourself, remember it's only a time, it's only a date, never mind what anyone else is doing, you can't see that they may be having problems too. Christmas is a date, a time, like September 10th, October 11th, May 9th, but unfortunately Christmas tends to start in November, intensify to the end of December and go into January, so yeah, it takes a while and a bit of strength to get through it if you're struggling for whatever reason. It can be done, don't give up. It isn't forever, and next Christmas may be better.
Here are a few reasons people struggle at Christmas:
- Financial concerns
- Death of a loved one
- Domestic Violence
- Abuse of any kind
- Arrests, criminal or civil proceedings
- Family tensions
- Homelessness
- Divorce or relationship breakup
- New baby
- Loss of a baby
- Bad memories
- Conflict
- Fraud
- Job loss
- Disasters such as fire and flood.
- Car accident - from experience the roads get dangerous around this time.
- Having to work - I was a delivery driver in winter - see the last bullet point.
That's a few, add your own. Christmas is far from merry for more people than we realise. I will not go back to that list and tell you I've been through a number of those at Christmas and I won't tell you which ones, but Christmas, depicted as 'Merry and Bright', just isn't Merry and Bright for everyone.
I was once walking home from Midnight Mass in England, I was on my own as my church didn't do Midnight Mass and so I was a guest at another church near my home. In England they include communion wine and not just the wafer as they do in Ireland and France. I don't drink, so that's the only wine I would have all Christmas, but I thought I'd had too much when I saw the bus coming up the road towards me on the wrong side of the one-way road.
The road had been closed and the bus sent back because a man had been killed on the road outside the pub, he was killed by a single punch.
I sidestepped the terrified chaos at the pub and walked down to the sea, looking at the waves in the dark, I thought of someone else who had died there, and someone who was in prison for 17 years, my thoughts and memories were dark. The friends and family of the man who'd been killed by a single blow would be marking Christmas as the anniversary of his death forever. Such things although they fade, they are never erased, and grief can live on forever if a closed loved one - a partner, parent or child dies this way.
You are not alone, Christmas and pre-Christmas go on for a while, they change normal ways of life, routines, work patterns, and if something goes wrong at Christmas it can be so much worse than in 'normal time'. I haven't told you my worst Christmases but I can tell you about some things which help me to get through and to enjoy Christmas. Not all of this will apply to everyone, it's just thoughts based on what I do.
- Keep an open mind and don't 'hate' Christmas, just let it be Christmas, from November onwards, let the beautiful lights and cheerful music and events and everything be there, don't avoid them, the lights in town, the trees everywhere, the music, they can be all yours to enjoy, the church festively decked out and open for private prayer, so nice, so cheerful, so hopeful, and free to everyone. Christmas is part of life, it will keep coming back, just let it be.
- No Christmas Dinner? It's not essential, there's no rule. If you want Christmas Dinner and there's a community meal, they are good, they are great and you'll meet people, unless you don't want to, and the organisers will find you a corner on your own. If you don't want or need or can't get a dinner, it is personal choice. I remember one year, no money, alone, and all I could get was some chicken wings, which I cooked and shared with the 9 cats I was minding. It was okay. Another year I was with my friend who was dying, for Christmas Day, and the next day I went to a person who I knew was alone over Christmas and I cooked us a full Christmas meal and we celebrated Christmas together that St. Stephen's Day. Christmas is a lot more flexible than people imagine and flexibility, something different, can make a memorable Christmas, can start traditions.
- No cards, no presents? Let me tell you, you can have as many as you like. I remember one year I was close to suicide, things were terrible, one of the things that kept me alive was that I got a list of the names of every resident in the nearby retirement and nursing home, a big place, and I found out if they preferred to be known by first name or 'Mr/Mrs' as older people sometimes do, and I wrote out a card for all of them. I made a lot of new friends, but I was told by the activities co-ordinator that it made Christmas very special for some of those people who had no card. I'm not boasting, but it made my Christmas, it helped me to turn away from suicide, because I reached out and people reached out to me in return, not just residents who were delighted to get a card, but the staff too, and families of residents. I made friends. Now these days I wrap many many presents for people who I will never meet and who very much deserve them and will be delighted with them. I am a volunteer with the national Shoe Box appeal and I wrap hundreds of gifts. So you can have as many presents and cards as you can ever handle, just send them to other people. No one except shallow people will be looking at you yourself and judging how loved or unloved you are judging by what you actually get for Christmas yourself, and you don't have to discuss it or tell anyone what you get or don't get. As an adult, and I'm assuming my readers are adults, we don't 'need' presents, but they are nice, aren't they? I know, but I like my presents to be the ones sent to children in poverty and cards to be sent to lonely older people. Be nice for Christmas, don't feel downhearted that it's not an easy Christmas, personal presents and cards are a nice option. Keep in mind, if you can't afford to get someone something they want for Christmas, you can tell them, and if they love you, they'll understand, you can talk about it. A small gift with love is better than a gift you can't afford, just to please someone.
- The whole Christmas experience. There are always Christmas markets dotted around, they are great fun to visit, very atmospheric, and don't worry, most people can't buy anything there, it's the atmosphere, the experience. I can't buy anything, but I love to go. Any music device has Christmas songs and carols, and I'm listening to those Christmas songs from November onwards and just enjoying the upbeat themes, the memories of old Christmases and the familiarity of the songs at this time of year. I watch Christmas lights tours on YouTube. Christmas craft materials are very cheap, I love making wreaths and decorations, and as for traditional decorations, as cheap as 10 cents a piece at the charity shop. Then there's my favourite thing, the advent calendar. But mine is a special advent calendar, keep in mind again that I am not paid for mentions or links or anything, I get the Jacqui Lawson interactive advent calendar on my devices. If any element is missing from your Christmas, you can have it artificially on the Jacqui Lawson calendar. Decorating trees, making Christmas biscuits and recipes, wrapping presents, taking part in Christmas activities, building snowmen, and much more. I have that underpinning my every Christmas, no matter what is missing due to poverty, homelessness, domestic problems or whatever. Christmas is to celebrate the birth of Jesus, it may not be his correct birthday but nonetheless, it's a celebration, it's meant to be fun. Christmas to suit you is simple and relatively cheap to put together, never mind what others do or expect, Christmas isn't just for others, it's for you as well. I have been to numerous houses of millionaires and wealthy and powerful people at Christmas, yes I really have, because I worked for the big houses and lived in wealthy areas, and all I can tell you is, they don't have a better time than people who are struggling but choose to be happy, because to wealthy families, it is hard to make Christmas more than just another day surrounded by good things, they aren't necessarily happy, indeed I have yet to meet a very wealthy person who is happy.
- Christmas is a holiday, things are different. I may be autistic but I say rejoice in it, if you're off work, watch films and programmes, there's loads of good stuff on, relax, enjoy the differentness of the time, get extra rest, do different things, go for walks if you can, put the mobile phone down. Work shifts at Christmas are unique, different, more chocolatey, and sometimes a good opportunity to earn some extra money. Sometimes I used to do the job of 5 drivers because the others were off drunk, but the money was fantastic. The Christmas week, when everything is down is also a good time enjoy change and difference, to make some New Year's Revolutions, plan for change in the new year.
- Christmas is no time for drinking to excess and feeling terrible, it's a time for you, and for looking after yourself, for overcoming bad feelings and ending the year as positively as possible even if things are tough. Sometimes it's time to make that resolution to make sure things change for the better, that tough resolution to leave, end or change the situation which has been making Christmas so hard.
If you're struggling with Christmas, hang on for my sake, I want you to be okay. See if things get better in the new year, face it with determination and fight for you, for your best interests.
Dr O'Brien, I've 
