Why do I feel so flat this year?

[Acunningruse]

On paper I should be full of the joys of the festive season but I am just not feeling it this year. If anything I should be more relaxed, as we aren't hosting this year. I don't know if it's because the kids (12 and 8) are getting older and its the first year of DS not believing, or the fact that they don't want to do anything which involves leaving the house unless its to see their friends. My social media is full of rosy-cheeked children making memories on festive days out and mine are living in joggers eating cereal 🙈

We are very, very lucky and I do absolutely know this and would never ever say this in real life. But how can I get my festive spirit back?

Wear joggers and eat cereal with them! Social media doesn’t show the families wrestling their kids out the front door, the forgetting of coats, the arguments about wearing seatbelts, etc etc.

Comparison is the thief of joy, I always have an Instagram break over Christmas.

(Holy mackerel this is way longer than I expected - you hit a nerve in me!)

Ahh the dreaded social media. Thinking about growing up in Chicago in the days of no SM and the one big thing (the only thing, really) we'd do during Christmas break was visit the mall Santa and then the rest of the time was us in our sweatpants eating sugary cereal. Probably sledding as it was snowy, but no one would know if we did because there were no phones to capture it.

I know that you know this but I'm going to say it anyway - you've no idea what a mood everyone was in before that pic was taken, how much the kids needed coaxing out of the house, the bribery for 'one nice pic'.

I have tickets to one of those 'fancy gardens' to get the kids out in the fresh air tomorrow (Christmas Eve) and we'll take a few nice pictures for relatives back home but if they had it their way they'd play separately in their rooms all day and only talk to us over Alexa (10 and 12, kids not the Alexa).

And I'd clean the kitchen and have a short cry about how they're getting older and when did Christmas go from fun to non-stop chore-a-palooza that starts some time in mid-October, and why do I not get a stocking any more, and oh god did we ever decide if everything gets ripped down before NYE and oh I need to google 'what is twelveth night anyway' and you see where I'm going with this. The Christmas cheer is nowhere near.

So, there's this thing that I do with the teams I work with, we do retrospectives where we look at what went well, what didn't go well, what can we do different next time, etc. And every year on Boxing Day I do one from that Christmas, in the hopes that next Christmas is incrementally better than the last.

So things like 'the pigs in blankets from weren't nice, don't get those again', 'that panettone from was lush, get one of those again', 'don't book in so many things to do, the kids were exhausted and needed a weekend with nothing on, it's OK to not pack every second full of Christmas-ness', stuff like that. And then I put it in my calendar to pop up around mid-October the next year and go 'god I was picky/bossy last year' and ignore half of it.

So I think my one thing on my 2025-Christmas 'be better' list will be 'just enjoy yourself'. Now you've made me cry!

I also feel a bit flat and usually I LOVE Christmas! Love the music, shops filling up, the whole build up (only acceptable to me after Remembrance Day though!) but this year it's just so 'meh'.

I was poorly for a lot of Oct and Nov, and finally came out of the brain fog early Dec, so maybe my brain isn't caught up to it being Christmas yet. Or maybe it's the weather, it's mostly been grey, windy and wet for weeks on end, we've not had any fresh, crisp autumn or winter days. Maybe a combo. Either way, I feel like I just can't wait to get past it all this year.