when things go wrong

a Christmas exercise in humility, love and grief

An early noughties Christmas, Pengelly-style

Yesterday morning, one of my best friends sent me this message:

‘Thanks for returning the scarf- I just want to check that you didn’t send anything else in that package, it was open when it arrived?’.

I could have sobbed! She was right, of course. I’d posted her a gift that I’d spent a silly number of hours researching and organising, only to have it fail to reach its destination. ‘Argh’ she said, when I explained what the present was. ‘That’s such a thoughtful gift .’ ‘I know!’ I replied, feeling an odd sense of grief about the whole thing.

As usual, the penultimate week of advent arrives bearing a myriad of emotions. Anticipation continues to brew amongst the smallest members of our family, alongside a growing realisation that however hard I try some aspect of this period will probably not go to plan. My father once coined the term ‘perfectchristmasitus’ to describe the condition he also suffers from around this time of year (it’s hereditary, I gather). The prospect of something going wrong on or around Christmas day fills us both with a sense of festively-tinged dread.

On one Christmas Eve, a solitary bulb on our Christmas tree went out - which meant none of the fairy lights would work. This was before LED lights were a thing, so Dad, fearful of a less-than-perfect Christmas, stayed up until the early hours checking every single bulb to see which one he had to replace. Another year, Dad accidentally managed to misread who he had to give a Secret Santa present to – and so his eldest daughter was given two Secret Santa gifts whilst his youngest received nothing¹. It prompted a yuletide sadness from which he never quite recovered.

So today I’m thinking about why this time of year makes us feel all these things so deeply. And particularly - why does it feel like such a tragedy when things don’t work out in the way we planned?

Well praise be! The film director Richard Curtis (of Love, Actually fame) has some answers to this question. I watched his latest offering That Christmas earlier on in the week, and felt my ears pricking up when the narrator explained that:

Christmas is a bit like an emotional magnifying glass. If you feel loved and happy, Christmas will make you feel even happier and more loved. But if you feel alone and unloved, the magnifier gets to work and makes all those bad things bigger and worse.

I think the same rule of thumb applies to the control freaks among us. If you’re a control freak at other times of year then you’ll be the mother of all control freaks on Christmas Day. In fact, you’re probably quite an annoying person to be around during December full stop.

But as every control freak who has been to therapy knows, at it’s heart control-freakery is really about love, and our desire for it. It’s about wanting to be loved for being a perfect version of yourself, because that’s the only version you can imagine other people loving. This is definitely how I feel. I feel like if I can *just* do all of the things on my Christmas to-do list, my family and friends will think that I am perfect and love me for it.

A couple of months ago I wrote about my attempt to not hold things together. Trying to do that after the birth of my first child almost killed me, so this time, I would just try to chill out and not let things get to me. I’d say I’ve half-succeeded. When the aforementioned best friend came to stay, I intentionally didn’t clean the house to the standard I would normally expect of myself. And of course they came and said nothing about the state of the house and had a lovely time and then left. So my deepest fears (of being judged?) did not come to pass.

But Christmas. It holds so much for us. It’s a container for so many feelings, particularly feelings about our self-worth. If the year has not been a good one, then some will want it, along with the rest of 2024 to be over already. Those who have had good fortune over the past twelve months might want to elongate the christmas period as much as possible, revelling in the yuletide spirit.

This year, more than most, I am feeling things very deeply. I feel happy. So happy. Happy that our second child arrived, and relieved that the midwives were able to keep him with us when he was struggling to breathe. But the flip side to my joy are the images I continue to see on a daily basis that cut me to the quick. You know the ones. Maimed bodies. Children with limbs missing. The fact that I am no longer shocked when I see these images online disturbs me more than I can say. And then a couple of days ago I read that Khaled Nabhan, the Palestinian grandfather who publicly grieved for his granddaughter Reem - describing her as the ‘soul of my soul’ - had also been killed by the Israeli army. I felt an acute sense of grief hearing this news, a grief that was heightened by the happiness I had been feeling for most of that day. These two feelings, of happiness and grief, sit side by side, and for now I’m allowing them to do so.

Because the truth is that things are going wrong all the time. Every single hour of every single day there are unspeakable things unfolding. And all of that stuff exists alongside all of the joy and love and hope that we experience. One cannot displace the other, sadly - but also thankfully.

My hunch is that the minor tragedies we encounter over Christmas (the lost present, the father who doesn’t show up to his daughter’s christmas play) point to the deeper tragedies that are occurring simultaneously in our world. I feel that they are reminders, or incidental representations of the way the world is versus the way we want it to be. Our attempt to ensure that everything is perfect, at least for one or two days of the year, is perhaps a way of reclaiming control and bridging that gap. But things will go wrong, and that gap is always likely to exist. So instead of running away from those things, or trying to ‘fix’ them by staying up all night, I wonder if we can hold them, and perhaps allow Christmas to be a container for these bigger tragedies, too.

However you feel right now, I hope you are able to find space to acknowledge the wrongness that we encounter in our lives and in our world. As I write this I’m reminded of a quote by the artist Oliver Lesser, who once said that ‘Everything's coming together while everything's falling apart’. He uses this phrase to describe the absurdity of living in a time where we have the tools we need to resolve climate change, but not the political will to do so. I feel that he is asking us to pay attention to both the wrongness and the goodness, the darkness and the light. The falling apart and coming together.

Happy Christmas.

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Thanks for reading! This is my last Murmuration of 2024 so I’m sending you light and love for the coming days and beyond.

Recommendation Corner: Things are going wrong! edition

1. I published a novel and nobody cares! via ASK POLLY - I feel like I spend a good chunk of each week talking to disillusioned artists and writers. People who feel a bit crushed and embarrassed, but don’t really have someone to talk to about it. This is a brilliant Q&A that unpacks a lot of the shame authors feel about the experience of being published.

2. Ho-ho-no! Children in tears after vicar tells them Santa is not real via the GUARDIAN - can you imagine!? I would die.

3. Wham! Last Christmas unwrapped - via iPlayer - such a nostalgic look at the making of this perennial classic. And a reminder of what a musical genius we lost in George Michael.

1. For the record, the youngest daughter was duly recompensed for this blunder.