The Social Pressure to Catch Up Before Christmas: Why I’m Saying ‘No Thanks’

The Importance of Prioritising Self-Care During the Holiday Season

December.

It’s that time of year again.

November has passed, and the world starts to live in a timeline that counts down to the end of the year.

Kids have end-of-year class parties, offices have end-of-year celebrations, and there are girls lunches to celebrate another year gone by (which are actually just another excuse to get drunk and have a day out before six weeks of school holidays really display what parental responsibility is all about.)

Generally speaking, I love this time of year.

It feels like the only time on the calendar when it is perfectly acceptable to drop the ball.

You didn’t send gluten-free, sugar-free, taste-free treats to the third-grade class party?

It’s ok. It’s almost the end of the year.

You didn’t format that word document into a pdf file as well as you usually do?

It’s ok. It’s almost the end of the year.

You forgot to send a card to the friend who moved overseas?

It’s ok. It’s almost the end of the year.

The last month of the year is a free pass to be absent-minded, an allowance to not have the usual focus that we have forced ourselves to maintain from February through November. (I say from February because, let’s be honest, January is a bullshit month only there to recover from the hectic month that is December.)

While I generally enjoy the last month of the year, there is one thing about it that shits me to high heaven.

I genuinely loathe when everyone I have ever met, or acquaintances I happen to bump into at the shops, declares the dreaded statement:

“We must catch up before Christmas!”

Or worse,

“Let’s arrange a catch-up before the end of the year!”.

NO.

JUST NO.

Again, NO.

The simple fact is that if I haven’t seen you all year, if we have not made the time to see each other all year, if we have both not prioritised space in our schedules to spend time together all year, then it’s clear that I do not need to catch up with you before Christmas or the end of the year.

I am an extrovert. I love being out and about and having a great time with the people I love.

However, being in my 40s, surviving COVID lockdowns, not murdering my three children, keeping my business afloat, maintaining my house free from cobwebs, and sustaining a very healthy beauty maintenance routine has made me more of an introvert.

Or I’ve just become lazy.

I love my friends. Sometimes more than my own family. But by December, I am exhausted.

I have spent the last ten months shopping for fresh fruit and vegetables, ensuring there is actual meat in the fridge meat-keeper, walking the dog daily, preparing school lunches, remembering which kid has what uniform on what day, picking up medications, ferrying around dry cleaning, planning birthday parties, driving the offspring to all their afternoon school sporting commitments, washing the shit stains out of the various underwear worn by the inhabitants of my home, swapping soda stream bottles, accepting outlandish school approval requests, feigning interest in the various parent WhatsApp group chats and in between all of this finding time to get my own hair coloured and my eyebrows waxed.

I’m done.

I’m tired.

I need to go incognito for the next six weeks, and the people in my world need to just understand this and not ask me to urgently arrange a “catch-up before Christmas.".

My best friends are those wonderful people who are low-maintenance.

They know who they are.

The tie that binds our love for each other is the limit on the expectations we place on our relationships.

Each of us knows that it is perfectly ok to not talk daily; sometimes there is no proof of life for well over a month, and yet when we do eventually see one another, no time has passed. We pick up where we left off.

No one harbours resentment due to one party being busier than the other.

It’s an unwritten and unspoken agreement that we are all busy with too much mundane shit and carrying an unfair mental load to prioritise time in the schedule for a much-needed catch-up.

These laissez-faire types of people are the ones that I love the most.

I know that in a moment of need or an emergency, I can call on any of these wonderful people, and they will drop what they are doing and help me out any way they can.

I know that their not phoning, texting, or emailing is not a sign of someone being pissy that I may have overlooked their existence, but a mutual appreciation for the fact that life’s have-to’s have taken priority over life’s want-to’s.

Am I annoyed?

Hell no.

These are my people.

I can guarantee these people will never even utter the inference that there is a pressing reason to catch up before Christmas.

Contrary to what many insane people believe, the world does not end on December 25.

Our earth does not combust into a fiery ball of hell-infused lava on December 31.

If we decide to catch up on January 4th, it will be fine.

If we, shock horror, put in the diary a dinner arrangement for January 10th, thus neglecting to catch up before Christmas, the sun will still rise in the morning.

The bottom line is that if we have not, as close friends as we are, made each other a priority throughout the year, then we surely do not need to place any urgency on making plans to fit one another into the schedule before Christmas.

It doesn’t mean I don’t care for you.

It doesn’t mean you are not important to me.

It just means I am choosing to spend the last and most hectic month of the year prioritising myself.

If you want to know how that’s going, send me a message in January.

Happy Holidays!