High Days and Holidays Aren’t Enough: Postcard from the Christmas Come Down

It is a familiar pattern. Christmas is on the horizon. If you are recently bereaved, feeling adrift or in dire straits it may have little space to sparkle but even then it may bring with it a significance and a melancholy poignance that cuts deep. If things are ticking over OK, it will probably bring with it a wave of ritual, gathering and sensual and cerebral experience, which may feel a challenge and a thrill to honour.

Whatever Christmas means to you, the chances are that it’s more than you care to admit or even realise.

Yes, there is Santa and tinsel and presents, but perhaps it has such emotional resonance for you because it was quality time that you could spend with your family when you were growing up, or because it wasn’t. Perhaps it was the only time that your family were nice to each other or sat around a table, or perhaps it was terribly disappointing and stressful and you want to make it how it should have been now. Whether it went right or not it probably planted a vision, every year wrapping it in another layer of nostalgia or hope or mystery.

If you work, maybe you take a good chunk of time off. You may try to resist the materialism, the fuss, the stress. You will probably succumb more than you planned to the well-trodden path that is your Christmas. At some point you may well find yourself entering some kind of Yuletide frenzy or fugue; dashing manically or wandering bewildered around shops trying to ensure that every i is dotted, that every t is crossed and all possible homage is paid to the season.

Whether religious or secular, opulent or frugal, Christmas will probably feel like quite a big deal and quite an opportunity. Along with the stress, the money worries, the familial strife there will be joy and magic, conviviality and excitement. There will be that indescribable feeling that comes over you and takes you to another world, another existence another life. Whatever side dishes of seasonal stress come with the seasonal feast, a change is as good as a rest.

Twixtmas, whilst often jokingly referred to as some kind of confusing twilight zone, will also bring that otherworldly lift and, therefore, a break from business as usual. Even New Year brings a different perspective, in the wake of the festive hiatus. Encouraged as we are by tradition and the break in proceedings to reflect upon our lives and lifestyles and how we want them to change and to be.

Then it hits you like a tonne of bricks.

The party’s over.
You’re somehow expected to go back to normal.
Everyone is grumpy.
Everything is empty and bleak.
Disorientation rules.
Despair creeps in.
As a nation groans painfully into action and asks itself:

‘Is this all there is?’

Then begin the traditional internet searches for holidays, perhaps as far away as the following summer or perhaps even cheeky minibreaks to sustain morale in the meantime. That is a New Year pursuit for those who can afford it of course, those who have the luxury of jobs with holiday entitlement, decent salaries and those with forgiving enough outgoings. These are a dwindling and endangered breed perhaps. Yet many of them are still languishing in detested soul-destroying jobs.

Workers with working conditions that allow, are turning their attention to booking further time off if nothing else, if they haven’t used up all their annual leave already that is. Annual leave, even for those who have it, is quite scarce and precious and hard to come by and has to be carefully rationed. Perhaps job searches ensue, the occasional divorce, the occasional business launch, maybe an escape fantasy or two that may or may not materialise, but probably not.

Diets of course may feature in our thoughts. Exercise regimes, Veganuary, dry January and new life mottos may all play a part in our attempts at life refurbishment. These are attempts at taking back control of our own lives, being masters of our own destinies and somehow pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We want to feel that things can get better and that it is within our power to make them do so. If our circumstances are less tractable then at least we can change ourselves.

As self improvement and life goals progress, or don’t, during the course of the year, we are at best swimming against the tide and at worst flailing, drifting or drowning in the current. Many people’s lives are endurance tests; an exercise in cramming the square peg into the round hole day in day out. If they aren’t stuck with their noses to the grindstone in soul sucking jobs they may be negotiating their way through grinding poverty and lack of opportunity with no way forward in sight.

Even if we ‘make it’ in the widely accepted terms of our society, it will often begin to dawn on us that we have won at a mug’s game. Our fool’s gold will not sustain us, will not make us feel that we are living a life that is worth living, will not give us a life that will sustain us. We have created a society with a shared life goal that is entirely unhealthy for and unsuited to a human being and one way or another we are all paying the price. Succeed or fail at this game and you pay the price.

If we are lucky enough to be able to secure ourselves a decent living, which is the single occupation that dominates and steers most of our lives, we will likely continue to find ourselves living for high days and holidays. We will be counting down the time until we can spend meaningful time with our families again, get off the hamster wheel, stop and think, do something we feel like doing, or do nothing much at all. Sometimes we will just need to recover from the mental and physical exhaustion that daily life brings.

For the nine-to-fivers weekends are over too fast. For the shift workers and those working other hours the days off likewise. Time off too often isn’t spent recovering, having fun or having quality time with loved ones. Much of it is spent catching up with housework, shopping and trying to organise affairs. How can you find time to arrange banking, shop around for insurance, organise house repairs? The cost of living is high, so most don’t have the luxury of living comfortably on part time work.

Gone are the days when there was routinely somebody tasked with looking after the household and family affairs whilst somebody else went out to work. Everybody has to work, often full time. If they don’t they suffer the stress of financial hardship. The growing number of people on zero hours contracts spend their lives on call, never knowing from one week to the next how much money they will have and what their working pattern will be.

The stakes are raised further when children are involved. The existence of their children only breaks people’s hearts further when they have to spend all the hours god sends at work or risk being unable to provide for them. Children, even when very young, often spent most of their time away from parents and loved ones. They too have a daily grind. As they grow up, they do it largely away from their homes, their parents and their families.

The people largely charged with our children’s care, whilst possibly very caring and encouraging, do not love them. They are not invested in them as their parents and loved ones are. If a parent or grandparent wants to care for a child at home, they have to be able to afford to do that. That is increasingly rare. There is a gap of a year or two between how long maternity pay tends to last (a year or less) and when childcare funding kicks in (at 2 or 3 years old). Because of this, parents can spend most or all of what they earn on paying someone else to look after their baby, for fear of losing their job.

When childcare funding kicks in at 2 or 3 years old, it does not cover wrap around care for a full time job, so extra care still has to be purchased. The funded care is only for a nursery place or the services of a childminder too, not to support a parent or loved one to care for the child. This is justified in part by some kind of scattergun approach aimed at dealing with the rare worst-case scenario. Children will theoretically get a basic level of care and all-important education if they receive standardised paid care away from their parents. In order to avoid deprivation for a few, the majority are encouraged into this model where they are taken away from their families by the state for their own good. This approach is almost colonial in its arrogance and misguidedness. It isn’t compulsory, but it is a powerful norm and many parents feel they have little other choice.

Another reason that we are all encouraged to leave our children with strangers as soon as possible is so that we can all be nice and financially productive. There is also a kind of national assumption floating around that nursery somehow better fosters social development and encourages independence. This doesn’t bear much scrutiny. Why wouldn’t parents facilitate a social life for their children and themselves? How independent do 1, 2 and 3 year olds need to be? Why don’t we at least have an accepted and supported choice to take part more in the care and education of our own children and to just spend time with them if we want? Most parents would agree that this is what their children would want if they had the choice.

If parents want to educate their own school-age child, god forbid, that involves enormous sacrifice, difficulty and financial strain. That is if they can afford it at all, which most cannot. It is also largely frowned upon and much judgement and prejudice is likely to follow. Parents decide to home educate sometimes because they don’t believe a system is healthy that starts formal full time education at 4 years old, tests children so much and puts them in large, single-age classes. Often, though they are responding to distress and deterioration in their child when they do go to school. In some cases this is because schools increasingly fail to cater for special needs, fail to deal with bullying and are more cash-strapped and stretched and are less able to care and educate well all the time. There is certainly an argument, though, for school not being the ideal environment for children in general.

Parents may have rewarding and fascinating careers that they love, don’t want to give up and wouldn’t want to diminish by going part time. From my own life experience and people I know I would say this is rare. They may feel that they could not care for their children full time or more than they do and that they need work for sanity. I would say there is some of this around, but that in itself is partly a result of the way our society is organised and how isolating parenthood can be. Why do most full time working parents do it? For the money, and often reluctantly with heavy if not breaking heart.

I am referring to parents to be inclusive, and these issues certainly do effect men, but those affected most are women. They do tend to be the main carers of the children, not always, but most often. They are the ones that in living memory could devote much of their lives caring for their children and now can not. The world is full of women breaking their hearts whilst reluctantly handing their babies over. along with their hard-earned cash, to strangers. They do this knowing that the strangers don’t love their children and they do it so that they can go to jobs they don’t enjoy. Then they miss their children and feel guilty for not being with them while they are at it. This is not all mothers, but there are quite a few who feel like this and have no apparent choice.

Of course women shouldn’t HAVE to ‘stay at home’ and look after the kids and the house (a misleading term as full time parents don’t usually lock themselves in their homes). Nor should anyone have to. Nor should it always have to be the woman or even one of the parents if someone does. It does seem like a poisoned chalice, though, that we have all, male and female, young and old, won the right to work our fingers to the bone and rarely see our families. Most of us have nobody keeping the home fires burning and no time to take care of our households and affairs, let alone have fun and quality time and family life, except on high days and holidays.

Those of us who have pets tend to think about the kind of environment they need. We make sure we entertain them, that they have company, stimulating toys, fun, exercise, love. We try to give them an environment and a life that they can enjoy, that makes them feel healthy and happy and fulfilled and that is natural and comfortable for them. We try to minimise their stress. We don’t just think about giving them food and water and shelter. They do a similar thing in better zoos or wildlife parks. They try, to the best of their ability, to recreate a natural habitat for each animal, which is a conducive environment for that animal to thrive. That involves their ability to do what they would naturally do and have a normal social life. Most people even want the animals they eventually eat to have been given a natural, healthy life up until the point that they are killed. Yet we don’t give that to ourselves.

It is a first world problem no doubt, and less wealthy societies have their own problems, but we have a basic problem, certainly in the current society of the UK and the West, that we are evolved for and suited to a certain kind of life. Our society has strayed far away from that, to the extent that we cannot, as a people, be happy. Certain individuals might find a way around things. They may manage to create a more privileged, conducive existence for themselves and their families, but as a society we are sick and poorly catered to. We have boxed ourselves into having largely miserable, unfulfilling, frustrating lives. We can and do adapt to a point, but the cracks will show because we are asking ourselves to adapt too much.

We are evolved to live in small tribes and to lead collective, shared existences with people we are invested in and who are invested in us. We are evolved to take part in shared communal activities that are beneficial to the group and perhaps to have specialist skills and responsibilities, but to lead a holistic, integrated life, not a dislocated or isolated one. We are meant to have a close relationship with the food we eat, our homes, our environments and above all our family, friends and neighbours. We are evolved to share childcare but to live a life where we are around our children, families and friends.

We are not evolved to leave our homes and communities to go to places where we don’t want to be doing meaningless things that we don’t want to do, in the company of people who don’t really care about us, aren’t involved with us personally and may even be antagonistic or exploitative towards us. People may have cordial relationships with colleagues and occasionally friendships, but by and large work relationships are formalised noncommittal relationships, exchanging money for labour.

Of course, tribal life wouldn’t be and isn’t perfect, blissful and harmonious at all times. It is just the natural state of being for humans for better or worse. We are used to our modern lives and comforts and returning to a tribe situation would no doubt be quite stressful to deal with too, at least at first. However, it’s not that long ago that a family could live on one wage, people lived in communities and people knew, and shared their lives and childcare with, their neighbours. Things have changed quickly and much as many of the changes have been good, women’s rights and freedoms being one of them, we do seem to have thrown the baby out with the bath water. With the best will in the world, we just can’t keep up. We’re not wired for it.

We are selling our lives, or in some cases perhaps entering into something closer to slavery, as we can hardly afford to do anything else. We have monetarised our lives so much and experienced such a rise in cost of living and reduction in money available that it’s hard to step off the wheel. We hanker for something different, for something more (or perhaps less), for something that more closely resembles how we were naturally meant to live.

That is one reason why many of us love Christmas time so much, even if it gives us mixed feelings. Sparkle and extravagance aside, it takes us back to basics of home and food and family and community. Then we live for our family holiday if we can afford one, or the day out … anything to make us feel human again and to enable us to enjoy real human connections and actually share our lives, briefly, fleetingly with our loved ones.

We hanker for the high days and holidays that take us away from our normal lives, because our normal lives aren’t natural. Our normal lives aren’t healthy. Our normal lives are broken and ill-fitting and toxic. We need whole real appropriate human lives, not endurance test, painful, sleepwalking, dysfunctional lives. Our normal lives are not enough and, lovely as they are, neither are our high days and holidays.