It was in 2002 that a visiting American friend told my astonished children that back home he could buy a car on Christmas day. He had arrived in Ireland in the third week of December and was alarmed by my warning of the impending shut down.
Twenty years on, my children are adults and I have the luxury of being able to opt out of Christmas but not to the same extent as my American friend. I can tolerate the bling around me, scuttle away from the seasonal tunes in shops and choose not to bring Christmas into my home. But there is no escape from the enforced seasonal shutdown. I am subject to the frantic shopping sessions before the two-day closure of supermarkets when fleets of loaded trolleys line the aisles. In recent years one local service station has opened for a few hours on Christmas Day. Before that welcome innovation we had to fuel up with the same frenzy given to filling our freezers.
We are all complicit in the commercial manipulation, overspending on items we don’t need. I would like to think I can rise above the undertow of the media-led exploitation of emotions that urges us through the season. The stagnant golden-age depiction of Christmas expressed in Regency-era toy soldiers, sugar-plum fairies or deep-midwinter candlelit cottage scenes is nonsensical to me, but for many this fantasy exacerbates a despair and loneliness that no chubby Robin on a snowy twig can relieve. And even for those more fortunate, a significant industry has developed around the angst of Christmas. Experts pour energy into telling us how to de-stress, how to cope with the influx of relatives, how to keep calm and cook the perfect roast potato. This is the language of the season fuelled by pseudo-ideals of perfectionism that are simply unattainable to so many who are burdened with emotional, financial and health concerns.
To embrace my freedom from the madness, I decided in 2018 to leave it all behind with a trip to Amsterdam. I booked into a small self-catering unit the size of a standard hotel room. It had a fridge, a kettle, a two-hob stove and not a hint of tinsel. Stepping out for a walk on Christmas morning it was a pleasure to find that it was business as usual for most shops and cafes. All the museums were open and the streets were full of people going about their business without any sense of urgency, served by an efficient public transport system.
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Last year I found a remote hideout in deepest Kerry. An email from the owners asked if I wanted Christmas decorations put up, as many people did not want them. My response in the negative made me feel part of a kindred secret society. I settled in for a four-day stay on a remote coast without a bauble in sight. The experience was not comparable to Amsterdam as the usual fret over having stocked enough food meant a Christmas Eve dash was still required. In sight of a wild sea and under a wide sky, I didn’t mind having nowhere to go but I didn’t want to run out of milk.
My personal comfort aside, there is a more urgent issue around holiday closing. Alarming statistics have emerged from the Covid lockdown period on the effects it had on the rise in domestic violence. Christmas Day is no different for those families under stress who are hemmed in together with alcohol in the mix. The media portrayals of happy family scenes will leave many children devastated with disappointment and living with tension. In such predicaments there is benefit to offering an out. Run public transport, put on events, open cinemas, activity centres and shops. Those who will complain that we all deserve a day off can take solace in lieu days or bank holiday conditions. Many of us already work in critical service industries that cannot shut down.
Our society is progressively multicultural and we are bettered by an exposure to other experiences. We can enjoy new ventures in food, art, music, literature and language. As people of a modern country with a wide diaspora, we acknowledge our place on the world stage and promote freedom of expression to both religious and secular groups. In our pursuit of a positive cosmopolitan society, we can loosen the restraints of the seasonal calendar for those who don’t partake or those who celebrate Christmas Day on a different date. Lending a sense of normality to the holiday period will also ease the burden on those who need an escape. You can enjoy the trees, tinsel and turkey but let’s have an open season with something for all.
Theresa Ryder is a writer