Age Cymru Partnership research found that nearly 85,000 people aged 65 or over in Wales were alone for Christmas last year. More than 112,000 older people said Christmas Day is their hardest day of the year. The hashtag #JoinIn on Twitter / X has provided supportive connections for people of all ages feeling isolated at this time. Some pubs offer free meals for people spending Christmas alone.
There are many reasons why people might be alone at Christmas, and why that might be challenging. Especially for those for whom it’s their first time alone, who are grieving a loss, are feeling isolated anyway, can’t afford anything Christmassy, or are away from home. If you Google ‘alone at Christmas’, most results conflate ‘alone’ with ‘loneliness’. But I have a confession: I love spending Christmas alone. I prefer it. I’m not lonely. And the only difficulty I have with it is people not wanting me to be: apparently there’s something taboo about it. Am I alone in this preference?
Christmas pasts
I used to love Christmas with others. My Dad was a cameraman, so my brothers and I would attend a fantastic party put on for children of BBC staff. We were sometimes asked to be in Christmas programmes – sitting on Val Doonican’s knee and failing horribly to play the mouth harp springs to mind. Extended family would come over to drink snowballs, eat prawn cocktail, watch Morecambe and Wise, and openly snooze. There were many pleasant traditions that only happened at Christmas.
Things changed a bit when we emigrated to Canada. But we took many traditions with us, and befriended families with kids we could spend time with at Christmas. However, after I moved back to Britain, some brothers moved away, my parents divorced, my grandparents died, all of that naturally splintered. Now both my parents are dead and my closest relatives thousands of miles away. It’s impossible for Christmases past to happen as they used to ever again.
If I’d married and had children, we would have created our own family Christmas culture, but I accidentally didn’t. And throughout adulthood, I increasingly realised how much I’d masked being an introvert; never more than at Christmas. I’m not nearly as social as I’ve doubtless led friends and family to believe, and have always found being in groups draining. Luckily, escaping to your bedroom to read new Christmas books was looked upon benevolently in our family.
Four years ago, aged 55, I was diagnosed with ADHD and a sprinkle of autism. That explained further why I’d found Christmas and other get-togethers enjoyable yet anxiety-making and exhausting. And found it hard to focus on more than a few people at once, maybe seeming unfriendly or awkward. It took an unacknowledged toll.
Christmas presents
Through my 20s and 30s I often spent Christmas with other people’s families. It’s hard to describe how much more difficult that made Christmas without sounding terribly ungracious. It was extremely kind of them to think of me and welcome me into their homes. I was very grateful, and enjoyed much of it.
But if your own relatives are draining, you can multiply that exponentially when you’re with others’, no matter how lovely. They have their own family cultures, traditions, and politics. You have to work out what those are, accommodate and navigate them, fit in, while being with more people than your nervous system or brain’s borked executive function can handle. All while meeting new people and moving around unfamiliar homes, eating unfamiliar foods. Oh, the sweet relief of getting home and being alone!
There was also sometimes the sense that having you there was a charitable act: you were going to be alone at Christmas, they didn’t want you to be and took pity on you. ‘Alone at Christmas’ was assumed to be loneliness, because it would be for them. You cut a sad figure for them. It’s about their discomfort, which then becomes yours when you spend Christmas with their racist uncle.
I eventually learned to decline well-meaning invitations, with gratitude but greater self-awareness. Sometimes I had to repeat myself until this was accepted. And sensed that some were unhappy or even disgruntled, especially after explaining when pressed that I’d prefer to be alone. I think a few took that personally, or were unconvinced. Even now, after decades of lone – and happy – Christmases, it feels like I’m breaking a taboo.
I also sense envy of my indulgent, largely stress-free Christmases from some who must plan, shop, cook, and host, and can’t relax for weeks.
Alone at Christmas futures
I’m not completely alone at Christmas. I have people I love who love me. This used to mean expensive long-distance calls. Since the internet, I can spend Christmas Day ‘alone’ but connecting with people around the world: the perfect introversion solution. Even that’s draining, so Boxing Day isn’t just bliss but therapy: films, food, naps, books, walks.
ADHD, autism, generalised anxiety disorder, social anxiety, introversion, singledom: none were in anyone’s vocabulary when I was young, let alone in general awareness. It’s great that we know and talk about them now. Though this coincides with the era of electronic devices you’re expected to have with you at all times, and answer quickly if not instantly.
So much of this is about expectations: those of other people, cultures, societies; extroverts. A teacher I worked with in South Korea lived with her parents and was expected to until she married. She had one longing: to live alone. To not have to meet expectations every minute of every day. To find things where she’d left them when she returned home.
And is there a day more loaded with expectations in the UK than Christmas? Those advising us how to be alone say, “Remember, it’s just another day”. It really isn’t, though. If people are lonely or worse when they’re alone at Christmas, or any time, we should find ways to help them not be.
But if people want to be alone, enjoy their own company, revel in being free of Christmas and other expectations, can we not just let them? Can we accept that being alone isn’t lonely for everyone? Could we not be … judgy?
After all, there’s no way of knowing for sure, but I suspect there are considerably more of us than you know.
