This article was originally published in The Australian and is republished with permission.
Too early for a Christmas column?
Probably too late.
This year’s Christmas creep – the annual commercial yuletide tsunami that washes over the nation, chock-a-block as it is with tack and tinsel, big-gutted Santas and bulbous-nosed reindeers, forests of fake trees and images of snowflakes and cosy fireplaces on wrapping paper, Advent calendars and biscuit tins as we hurtle towards a southern hemisphere summer – began months ago, if you hadn’t noticed.
Suddenly the jingle-jangle Chrissy muzak has cranked up in shopping centres and supermarkets, and festive-specific tunes are springing out of the wireless – from the perennially awful Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer to arguably the world’s most loathed festive tune, The Christmas Shoes, about an impoverished boy who races to buy his dying mother the gift of some decent footwear before she “meets Jesus”.
The first reported publicly premature Christmas goods incursion this year was at a Woolworths in Mascot in Sydney’s inner south in August, a full four months before the Big Day. The Daily Telegraph’s Olivia Lancuba lamented the early-onset yuletide: “The joy is in the waiting. How can you recognise magic when magic is there always?”
As of this week all of our major supermarkets are stocking – on shelf and online – everything from the Christmas-themed Mirabella Sunny the Pavlova Meerkat figurine to a farting Santa bubble machine, festive smash cakes, mango and passionfruit Yule logs, mince pies, ham legs, DIY gingerbread kits and thousands of other silly season things you didn’t know you needed. (A dumpster fire Christmas ornament, anyone?)
A lot of people love the season of goodwill. A lot of people loathe it. And for many of us the global cost-of-living crunch this year already has us baulking at that familiar question: What are you doing for Christmas?
If you have interstate relatives and hit the road with your family (say two parents, two teenage kids) you’re already thousands of dollars in the red whether you fly (Christmas is among the most expensive times of the year to catch a flight) or drive (diesel is already nudging $3 a litre).
But if you decide to host at home and invite your mob to the foot of your Chrissy mountain, there’s another monstrous financial hole when you add up the cumulative Christmas Eve/Christmas Day/Boxing Day food and drink tab, gifts purchased and the cost of extracurricular activities when the relatives and other hangers-on are in town.
Is it any wonder a lot of people are getting mentally and physically jittery this time of year? What are you doing for Christmas? How about a nervous breakdown?
Christmas and stress – what the data says
An international study published late last month underlines what we all know – Christmas isn’t for the faint-hearted.
Parenting Stress Spirals and a Gendered Labour Division over the Christmas Holidays by Elouise Botes, Julia Reiter and others, published in Communications Psychology, nails not only the anxiety that arises during these holidays but also the disproportionate amount of hard yakka mothers expend to keep the Christmas ship afloat.
In its introduction, the study says of the festive season: “During this period, parents are often expected to organise multiple family gatherings, co-ordinate travel plans to grandparents or other extended family, purchase and wrap gifts, prepare traditional meals, maintain family traditions such as decorating the Christmas tree, and manage children’s expectations surrounding the holiday season.
“These obligations frequently require substantial cognitive planning and emotional regulation, such as concealing stress, frustration or interpersonal tensions while maintaining a festive and positive atmosphere for children and extended family members.”
Extra burden on mothers
The British study looked at 293 men and women, including married couples with children, childless couples, single parents and others, and quizzed them about division of labour during Christmas.
It found: “Mothers reported performing more cognitive labour than fathers … this finding is consistent with previous work suggesting that the invisible planning, organising and monitoring involved in family life remains disproportionately undertaken by mothers despite broader changes in the division of domestic labour.”
The report recommends that “the cultural norms around parenting and the gendered stickiness (persistence) of cognitive labour must be addressed, and parenting couples’ dynamics directly targeted to improve women’s mental burden in the household”.
Hear, hear.
Another study – Higher Momentary Parental Burnout Predicts Lower Subsequent Emotional Expression in Parents During the Festive Season by Ziwen Teuber and others, and also published in Communications Psychology (2025) – aimed to “unpack parental burnout and genuine emotional expression, focusing on their interplay and dynamic patterns – inertia, variability and person-specific mean (levels) … during the Christmas season, an emotionally charged period that offers a valuable time window to study affective dynamics in parenting”.
It defined parental burnout as “a multidimensional construct, characterised by emotional exhaustion, where parents feel drained in their parental role; emotional distancing, marked by a sense of detachment or disconnection from their children; a sense of being fed up, where parents struggle to meet anything beyond their children’s basic needs; and a contrast to their previous parental self, manifesting in feelings of inadequacy compared to how they once perceived themselves as parents. Parental burnout has been associated with more severe mental issues, including depression, suicidal ideation and substance abuse.”
One of its many findings included “parents with higher baseline burnout experienced greater inertia and variability in burnout across the festive season”.
Stating the bleedin’ obvious?
How to dial down the tension
On a positive note, last year Australian Psychological Society chief executive, psychologist and health sector expert Zena Burgess offered some timely tips for a happy Christmas.
“Family conflict arises from the very nature of family itself: relationships are foundational, emotionally charged and often expected to be enduring,” Burgess told The Advertiser last year. “While there can be a range of sources of conflict within families, common topics include wills, estates and inheritance decisions, as well as disagreements about how to care for elderly relatives, manage shared property and divide responsibilities.
“Setting and maintaining healthy boundaries is crucial for mental health. When family members consistently try to violate these boundaries, it may lead to feelings of powerlessness, resentment and anxiety. Setting healthy boundaries often involves weighing the benefits of self-protection against the costs of setting boundaries and is usually undertaken after considerable reflection by an individual.”
She said one of the keys to wellbeing during this potentially sensitive time of year was to “not engage in deeper or more emotionally charged conversations, which may reduce the intensity of interactions between family members”.
A few years ago, University of Bristol social sciences expert Nilufar Ahmed proposed several foolproof Christmas survival tactics that still hold true today.
Her tips: set boundaries in advance, as per Burgess; stay out of any family arguments that might arise; focus on the things you like about family members; be mindful of your old patterns of behaviour and refuse to be “pulled into the drama”; and be mindful that the festive season is just a few days and that the amount of time “you will spend in a stressful space is actually quite limited”.
If all else fails, here are a couple of suggestions.
You could vanquish all family grievances by bringing out your Santa Bubble Butt Blower with Kris Kringle breaking wind and ejecting a steady stream of soap bubbles from his tradesman’s entrance, accompanied by flashing lights and music.
Is there a more international, cross-cultural, cross-gender, cross-language unifier than the sound of good old-fashioned yuletide flatulence?
And if that doesn’t bring everyone together?
Start crooning The Christmas Shoes: “You see she’s been sick for quite a while/And I know these shoes would make her smile/And I want her to look beautiful if Mama meets Jesus tonight.”
That’ll clear everybody out quick smart.