The minute the calendar ticks into December, several Christmas-themed events start happening. Somewhere, deep in the North Pole, Mariah Carey and Michael Bublé are thawed out and sent on their carol crusade. Decorations are dusted off, the quality of advent calendar chocolate is debated, and we all prepare for a month of merriment.
We are famously told it’s the most wonderful time of the year, but no one really talks about how it’s also the most intensely stressful time of the year because we are expected to catch up with everyone we’ve ever met.
Seeing family and friends is one thing, but must I celebrate the festive season with people from my gym?Credit: Marija Ercegovac
Over the past week, my wife has been quietly populating our shared calendar with a series of catch-ups with people whose names I barely recognise: Christmas drinks with Sam and Evie! Xmas lunch with Sally and her boys :) Kris Kringle at Justin’s! PS The present limit is $50, pls don’t go over!
Honestly, I could not pick Justin out of a lineup, so the idea of spending more than $50 on him is insane, but more importantly, no amount of excited exclamation marks or cute emojis will distract me from the reality that Christmas has been hijacked.
Once a special season reserved for friends and family, Christmas now doubles as a panicked bandaid for relationships that are on life support. If we’ve spent the previous 11 months largely ignoring each other, save for the occasional clap emoji on an Instagram story, why must we rush to catch up before December 25?
To make matters worse, sandwiched between drinks with Sam and Evie and Justin’s famous Kris Kringle are the seemingly endless onslaught of unnecessary Christmas parties. In previous years, I only committed to parties based on a specific set of criteria: how much fun will I have, and how obligated am I to attend?
Top of the list was my annual Friendsmas, which is, for the uninitiated, a gathering of close friends that is often more fun than your actual Christmas Day. Everyone brings a plate and gets dressed up, but really, it’s just an excuse to drink a vaguely festive cocktail and hang out with people you like the most.
Then there is the Office Christmas Party, the event we all pretend to loathe but secretly love.
The invite might be met with a collective eye-roll from the staff, who then begin the time-honoured tradition of complaining about how lame it will be. But there is something satisfying about raising a (plastic) glass of Yellowglen and watching a year-long office flirtation come to a clumsy conclusion.
However, both events risk being railroaded by more obscure celebrations. We’ve only just crept into December, but since early November, my gym has been bullying people into attending their annual Christmas get-together, which they insist on calling “Fitmas with the crew!”
I always looked at the workplace Christmas party in the same way I consider school reunions or movies starring Nicholas Cage. I begrudgingly attend and end up genuinely enjoying the experience. Credit: Stock
Usually, this is the kind of thing I would agree to enthusiastically in person (Fitmas with the crew? Count me in!) while having no intention of actually attending.
But because gym people are so intense (must be the endorphins), they have been sending the kind of borderline-aggressive text messages that gyms are famous for. Hey Thomas, we can’t wait to see you at Fitmas! Let us know if you have any dietary requirements!
The idea of celebrating Christmas with a bunch of people I barely know (who barely drink enough to make it tolerable because carbs) is very upsetting, and yet it feels impossible to avoid.
In addition to Fitmas, I have yet to RSVP to a Christmas pub crawl with old friends from school, Christmas drinks with new friends from work, and what’s being described as a “low-key Christmas on the lawn” with the people who live in my apartment block.
Once a special season reserved for friends and family, Christmas now doubles as a panicked bandaid for relationships that are on life support. Credit: Stock
I am sure all of these events would be fun in isolation, but there are only so many days in the week (and only 12 official Days of Christmas, according to the carol).
This is meant to be when you slowly switch off, the great winding down of December before you hit the promised land: that period between Christmas and New Year when time stands still.
Instead, I am figuring out how long I can stay at Fitmas if I want to catch the end of low-key drinks on the front lawn and still make it back into the city to watch Jenny from Accounts sing Jenny from the Block at the work party.
Somewhere along the line, the true meaning of Christmas - spending time with people you love and eating until you hate yourself - has been lost and instead replaced by a pressure to stuff as many social occasions into one month as possible.
Perhaps next year, I will give myself the gift of saying no, but this Christmas, I will take a leaf out of Santa’s book and try to be everywhere at once. Ultimately, the most powerful feeling of the festive season is one we all know a little too well: guilt.
Find more of the author’s work here. Email him at thomas.mitchell@smh.com.au or follow him on Instagram at @thomasalexandermitchell and on Twitter @_thmitchell.
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