Banish Christmas guilt and catch up on your own terms
The frantic Christmas party season draws to a close, though it will have a last flowering in the New Year as people seek to “do things differently” in 2024. One of the most familiar tropes is the sincere but sometimes weakly held intention to “catch up” with people you haven’t seen for months, or longer. The impending arrival of Christmas seems to galvanise us, partly through guilt, to restore bonds of friendship which have lapsed.
By nature I want to be gregarious. I like company and I like spending time with my friends. This does not always work in practice: sometimes—and this has particularly been true since the pandemic—the world outside the front door can seem overwhelmingly chaotic and demanding, and it is a relief simply to be alone amid home comforts. But I do feel guilty when I don’t see people for long periods of time, even if it is no-one’s fault, and the warm glow of Christmas cheer is the perfect encouragement to make good on those social caesuras.
The difficulty is that the three weeks or so which cover the festive period have to accommodate so much. As work winds down, we want to enjoy some social contact with our colleagues, whether over a few Christmas drinks one evening or, if you are employed in a larger organisation, in a rolling programme of events which divide and parcel up co-workers in half a dozen groups and contexts. When I was an official in the House of Commons, it was possible to find parties, receptions and meals almost every day if you were shameless and outgoing enough.
Sometimes you will hear people complain that they spend time at work functions socialising with colleagues with whom they have nothing in common and might not otherwise have any contact with. I always took the opposite view. Christmas lubricated the workplace in a way that allowed me to interact with men and women I saw every week or even day but in a new context, and even if it was a once-a-year occasion, it could be absolutely lovely.
Fitting in the revival of dormant amity among all of this, though, can be challenging. Friends who are not far off being recluses from January to November suddenly can only fit you in early evening next Thursday, maybe for an hour and a half. You are caught between the Scylla of neglected old comrades and the Charybdis of superficial jollity and to turn down anyone or anything feels horribly Scrooge-like and unseasonal.
Be brave. As November comes to an end, think back to last year, and the year before, and the year before, and learn from past mistakes. You will not be able to do everything and to imagine you can will only open you up to emotional injury from the inevitable failure. If you reach Twelfth Night and look back at people you didn’t see and parties you didn’t go to, you will sour the holidays just gone and prepare yourself to sour the ones coming in 11 months’ time.
I don’t propose any great soul-searching or some kind of Yuletide sorting hat to determine who you will and will not take time to see. Your calendar and those of your friends will constrain you, and there is always, must always be, space for glorious serendipity: that office party where you discover someone in another department shares your obsession with Steiff teddy bears, or the late night piano bar expedition with a chum you haven’t seen for years but suddenly remember makes you laugh harder than anyone else.
But be realistic. And let your realism rest on these two pillars. First, while it may be superficially disheartening, it is usually the case (unless I am just freakishly sensitive or presumptuous) that an acquaintance whom you don’t find time to meet will feel that loss less acutely than you imagine. Disappointment, of course; but they will get over it. Secondly, Christmas is a spur to socialise but it does not set borders around you. It may make someone’s name come into your mind, but there is no reason why it cannot result in a meeting in the quieter days of January. There will be time.
If you exhaust yourself and distribute your company in penny-packets you will satisfy no-one. Do what you can, see who you want, but remember: we’re all just trying to get through to the end of the day.