Perfection at Christmas - what if it isn’t like that for you
The perfection we seek at Christmas. Here we are once again amidst the twinkling fairy lights and ubiquitous adornment of a festive season, the sweeping pine and forest swags with gold-painted pine cones and the delicious wafting beckoning of room spray promise, of cinnamon spices and woody fruits. We are lit up by every shop window we pass where perfect outfits sequin dresses and matching pyjamas are tempting us to have “the perfect Christmas”, where with friends and family we will eat drink and be merry.

But what if your life isn’t like that? What if the year you have just had has been the year from hell?
What if your earnings dropped because of the financial struggle we all find ourselves in, or you’re cold at home whilst others seem to be smashing it alive in restaurants and bars, or you were betrayed by a friend, or lover, or your own children, or you just got made redundant, or you had a health scare, or your nearest and dearest don’t treat you well. Or you won’t be given that engagement ring you dreamt of because the love of your life, didn’t come through, and likely won’t? Or the love of your life is with someone else. If you are in a war-torn country.
Or you are utterly alone and there won’t be the exchange of beautifully wrapped gifts under a tree. Or you are homeless. Or worst of all you are grieving and you have lost someone you love more and way beyond words that can ever tell.
Or frankly, so many other difficult and painful situations you might find yourself in, make the perfection of the media sell of “everyone else has it all rocking at Christmas” is NOT rocking in yours?!
You can’t help but feel like you’re the “only one”, that somehow didn’t “get it right”. Somehow you failed and or you were failed. By life, by justice, by those you put huge trust in and yes l am including governments here too.
Yes, it all sounds too ghastly to be mentioning let alone be writing an article about during the onset of seasonal festivities, but all of the above and more that l dare say l have not mentioned is out there and in other’s reality.
Believe me, l know, because from the very beginning of the first exhibited display of Christmas trees for sale, on the streets and the first fairy light twinkle, l felt my heart sink this year. So apart from anything else, this is personal.
So l wanted to delve into the why unless our lives are imbued with the shameless perfection we are all sold, how that feels. And also what can be the panacea that has our hearts and souls once more being lit up.
So that it can be put like cards on the table. So that it can be ok and feel better because it isn’t hidden amidst the Yule logs and tinsel. I want like so many, what I’m being “sold” at this time of year. Not so much in the gifts department, but in the love, the belonging of we are all in this together.
Because we are you know. Despite appearances, each and every one of us “has a story”. Of our dreams, of our hopes, of what we long for, of what we fear. Of what we have lost.
Here is where it is. The hope, the light of not just getting through, but by a feeling of belonging that is unshakeable.
It is our humanness that we don’t “fall short”. It is in our togetherness that we carry on. That we achieve our dreams.
What makes it all bearable is love, support, kindness, care, understanding, friendship. Your smile to someone you pass by in the street.
Through this, through these most precious of all things. We can fly, we can continue to hope and dream and achieve against all odds. No matter what. It is with the love and support of others, their smiles, their “being there”. Their thoughtfulness.
This Christmas, reach out. And in doing so be reached.
From beyond the shame of your own charade, or your loneliness or your fear, or your dashed hopes and dreams, or from your own feeling of not having, or being enough. Or from your own joy because you are lucky enough to have these things.
To be there, alongside someone who is on a different journey. Reach out with your smile, your thoughts, your care, and gift that to someone, it might be just because of that that somehow it will light an internal candle in someone, a light that whispers to them, that they are not alone. That they can carry on to a brighter day.
Happy Christmas to you, because you count. Let us all be part of the solution.
