Christmas time - 'tis the Season to be Merry.
If only that were true for all. And while I don't want to be the 'Christmas downer', it is important that we have this conversation.
Through moments of stress and worry and desperately trying to switch off from work, I have always managed to adore Christmas Day.
But that is far from the experience of many. Prince & the Revolution told us in Another Lonely Christmas:
Your father said it was pneumonia
Your mother said it was stress
But the doctor said you were dead, and I
I say it's senseless
At Christmas time, all I ever hope for are the many forms of kindness that are not dependent on wealth.
There is a colloquial condition known as the 'Christmas sads' describing how the traditional holiday period brings a level of sadness, remorsefulness, and uncertainty about the day and the future.
The origins of that unofficial diagnosis are found in Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), also known as low-light depression, the result of a white Christmas in the northern hemisphere where winter and a lack of exposure to sunlight during the day alters mood.
Yet this is not the case in the southern hemisphere where, although kunanyi/Mount Wellington has been known for its unseasonal white capping, we are amid the summer months with longer periods of sunlight.
However, and tragically in Australia, the busiest time for family violence support services is the Christmas and New Year period.
There are severely increased levels of fear, stress, alcohol and drug abuse, and tension as families navigate where and who to spend the day with, concerns about not being able to provide as you wish, and events and memories that rear their heads during the festive season as those with complicated and complex relationships are forced together.
Support services united to collect data in 2019 and 2020 with the horrifying finding that, "Tasmania experienced 75 percent more family domestic violence assault incidents on New Years' Day."
We must all be aware, we must all check-in, and we must do our utmost to take personal responsibility to ignore inconsequential reactions to minor irritations, and not just during a couple of special days.
Maybe Christmas songs and carols hide the hardship like Christmas itself. A pretty chord or melody often masks sadness and the message.
Coldplay wrote in Christmas Lights:
Christmas night
Another fight
Tears we cried a flood
Got all kinds of poison in
Of poison in my blood
For my family, Christmas truly was the season of giving. And while, at times, there was a religious component of our acknowledgement, including a visit to my mum's church, it was far more than this because it was a day for suspending worry.
It was a suppression of conflict and an amnesty on argument, delivering the certainty that we all craved.
There were days when the traditional Christmas lunch was suspended and moved to a far less traditional evening meal because my mum would wash dishes at a local establishment catering for those who made the sensible decision to let others in the know take their concerns away.
For mum, double time or even double time and a half was far too good to ignore! As kids we got it, far from an in-depth understanding, but we got it all the same - money was important but working hard was of far more importance.
The joy would return once mum made it home. For just the four of us in Australia, with the majority resided overseas, Christmas Day was small but important.
We had spent Christmas time overseas before with open homes marking special times, like drop-in centres, welcoming family or friends who wished to spend a moment.
My family's favourite and his lament, I'll be home for Christmas (1943), on his 1945 album White Christmas, musing about the Second World War, Bing Crosby told us:
Christmas Eve will find me
Where the love light gleams
I'll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams
On average, Australia experiences an increase of 82 percent in calls to our support services and charities at this time of year.
Even though we have become far more aware of the scourge of domestic and family violence, this figure is staggering and deeply alarming.
For those of us with settled yet hectic family lives and structures, on this Christmas Day, we must consider what we can do to help.
Elvis Presley crooned about a Blue Christmas in 1957 as that generation became more aware of the challenges that the festive season presented.
However, the music doesn't really evoke melancholia because it would have been too much for the time. Sure, it has sad lyrics but there are harmonies and instrumental components that balance those messages.
Elvis Presley told us that Christmas could be blue:
And when those blue snowflakes start fallin'
That's when those blue memories start callin'
You'll be doin' all right with your Christmas of white
But I'll have a blue, blue, blue, blue Christmas
Merry Christmas one and all - may your time be spent with family, friends, and the less fortunate.
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