Single at Christmas: why so lonely?

Why does being single at Christmas feel so lonely? Our Sex and relationships editor investigates…

“It’ll be lonely this Christmas” crooned the voice being piped across the Boots the Chemist PA system, who I would only very embarrassingly much much later find out was not the legendary Elvis Presley but a man from Surrey called Les.

By the time he moved onto lyrics about ‘emptiness’ and ‘loneliness’ and an ‘unlit Christmas tree’ I could feel hot tears springing out from behind my eyelashes as I stared intensely at the 3-for-2 gift display trying not to break down in front of the other shoppers.

It was Christmas, I was newly single, and I was truly miserable about it. 

Merry Ex-mas

There I was, having my very own rain-down-the window black & white Adele-esque video moment. But it wasn’t the song (which I’ve never even particularly cared about) nor the Dove toiletries sets that were setting me off. It was the pressure.

The pressure of being single at Christmas felt like a big festive no-no.

Did I really miss my ex? Well yes. Especially as, while I was moping around the high street looking for unimaginative pressies, he was out there living his best life – day drinking, necking anyone displaying the merest hint of tinsel, and clearly in full ‘F*ck it, it’s Christmas’ mode. That really didn’t help.

But even despite that, I felt lost and abandoned, and at Christmas of all times! I felt like I could hardly bear it. The ghosts of Unrealised Potential Future and Shared Memories Past were rattling their chains at me and I was full of despair and hopelessness. 

A few weeks later though, when the pressure of Christmas was done and dusted, left out for the bin men with the discarded wrapping paper and withering trees, it didn’t feel half so bad. It made the crying in Boots episode feel a bit embarrassing, but that’s between me and their CCTV.

Yes, we know time heals, so even just a couple of weeks helped. But also, I’d finally been able to breathe in some emotional fresh air in the New Year. Turns out Christmas makes you feel really bad when you’re single, and I was glad to be out of the festive period that had made me feel so lonely and bereft.

Happily single until Christmas 

I’d find out later that it wasn’t just pre-Christmas break ups that make you feel rotten when you hear piped music in shops, spot couples in their big coats arm in arm, and there seems to be festive love in the air for apparently everyone else but you. Just being single at Christmas can make you feel inadequate and invisible at festive time.

You can happily function as a single human being for months – years even – but when you feel the frosty chill in the air and the opening chimes of Mariah Carey in the approach to the festive season it’s enough to make you want to throw yourself under the Coca Cola truck.

The Holidays are Coming alright and it’s enough to make you want to turn full grinch. 

Too busy to be lonely?

Why does ‘single’ feel so lonely at Christmas? I mean, it’s the busiest time of year, who’s got time for all that anyway?

We’re all trying not to catch colds, to remember who we got in the Secret Santa, buy new clothes but not too many new clothes that we can’t enjoy the January sales, remember where we put the good wrapping paper, and make sure that everyone on Instagram knows we’re fully in the festive spirit as well as super organised and thoughtful gift-givers who remember to move the Elf on the Shelf around every night.

Who’s got time for dating and shagging and spending hours smiling at your phone? 

Well, it would seem a lot of us would happily make time to fit all of this in amongst the backdrop of Christmas actually,  because deep down we equate special occasions with romance.

Christmas, once just about some shepherds and a king who wanted to kill babies (can’t believe Bruce Willis didn’t make that into the ultimate Christmas action film tbh) over the years transformed into something cute. About charitable giving, and family, lavish spreads of food and roaring fires, and time off work to relax and spend with people you care about. 

The pressure of modern Christmas 

Still don’t see why it makes us want to couple up? Well, years after the Victorian Christmas machine invented Christmas trees and Christmas cards, came Hollywood.

Believe you me I love me some Bing Crosby and It’s a Wonderful Life. But over the years Christmas became more about sentimentality, not to mention wall to wall marketing, with all the accompanying songs to make sure we felt every moment of it.

Fast forward to today and you can’t go anywhere between November and Boxing Day without hearing what a big deal it is to be single at Christmas. Looking at you, Darlene Love. Looking at you, Les from Surrey.

Yes, of course I’d rather spend Christmas watching Home Alone and demolishing a wheel of Brie and a tub of Celebrations with the central heating on full blast than plucking a goose for Christmas dinner and bouncing around like one of Little Women wearing ribboned bonnets and knitting people shit socks for presents. But why do we have to have all the pressure that comes with a modern Christmas? 

Why is it that this one day a year (combined with the double threat of New Years the week after) makes us feel like thoroughly miserable failures if we aren’t coupled up, in matching pyjamas, taking selfies (with ring light) in front of the perfectly decorated Christmas tree with our attractive, smiling, successful and probably wealthy young families?

Single at Christmas vs real life 

Time to give our heads a wobble. It’s not a competition. It’s not a competition with ourselves, or anyone else, and it’s not a race against the calendar either. Like Christmas trees, we’re all different.

Or at least we should be, and we should celebrate that. Our family dynamics are different, our lifestyles are different, our paths are different. We are not characters in a schmaltzy Channel 5 daytime Christmas film. Your story is not anyone else’s story.

This is not Love Actually, this is not The Holiday. It’s real life, and real life is nothing to be scared nor ashamed of.

It’ll be lonely this Christmas 

We know, from ad campaigns and common sense, that many people are genuinely lonely at Christmas. And I mean socially isolated, no family, no visitors, that kind of thing – not just failed to cop off at the works Christmas do.

And this message – people are lonely, we need to do something because it makes us feel uncomfortable – comes with a profound sense of urgency that it’s a social crime to let anyone be lonely at Christmas. But what about the rest of the year? 

When you think about it, what’s so special about Christmas anyway? It’s a page on a calendar that we collectively decided to make a fuss about and in the process allowed ourselves to beat ourselves up about too.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas (see: wheel of Brie), and there have been many moments over the years that I’ll remember where yeah, it was nice to be ‘part of a couple’.

My teenage boyfriend who walked 5 miles in the snow on Christmas morning to bring me my present of a Mr Frosty (that he knew I’d always wanted as a kid), the pub on Christmas eve with my fiancé, saving Christmas presents until Boxing Day so you can open them together, or a first date under Christmas garlands in the fresh promise of a new year. I don’t dismiss any of these little moments.

Behind many closed doors this Christmas will be people who crave little moments of closeness, of connectivity. You might crave someone to cuddle up on the couch and watch films with, to go out on cute winter dates with, to keep you company and make you laugh and feel alive when the kids have gone to bed and the house is quiet and still. 

It’s normal, it’s natural, but don’t let the soundtrack of Christmas loneliness ruin little moments with yourself too. My Christmas card to you is to remind you that you are whole – all year round. It’s all to easy to fall into the trap that by a certain age we should be settled down (whatever that looks like), or that we ought to start a family, or that we can never truly be happy without another person’s input. 

One last Christmas wish

While it’s almost impossible to fit another task in to a busy Christmas, I’d urge to you try and do this one last one: don’t let the shackles of what society says dictate how you feel. 

• If you are living in your mum’s box room at 30, please remember there’s people in relationships right now who would love to escape to their mum’s box room which isn’t an invitation to gloat but a reminder that goals are subjective 

• If you are near to tears seeing the proposals and pregnancy announcements unfold on Facebook, please bear in mind that for many of us who had the cute New Year’s Eve proposals and Christmas babies that looked so good online many years ago – we’re now separated from the other parent which wasn’t the original plan but it is part of real life 

• If a well-meaning relative puts you on the spot and asks you over Christmas dinner when you’re going to find someone nice and settle down just take it with a pinch of salt. Like their stingy £5 book tokens and inexplicable love of After Eights, their take on relationships come from a time where there was nothing more to life than pairing up and doing your duty

• If you have always quite liked the idea of having kids but you know full well it (usually) takes two to tango and there’s nobody even near the horizon and you too receive intrusive questions at Christmas, then I feel you. I’ve been there. So, so many of us have. But don’t let this make you feel lonely; that’s just other people’s bad manners. They’ll be gone by the time the flames on the Christmas pudding are out 

Christmas is a time when we put pressure on ourselves and we can feel it from all directions: music in shops, films on TV, couples everywhere we look. 

Just try and remember some things truly aren’t worth wishing for this Christmas. Use that wish on yourself, not someone else.