The coronavirus crisis is drawing a most surreal Christmas panorama. This Christmas you may have to spend it without your family or, at least, without doing the traditional Christmas rituals. We wonder how to cope with not being able to see family this Christmas and also if this is as negative as it seems. Let’s be clear, how many times have you complained in recent years about family gatherings at Christmas?
Spend Christmas without the family
- Spending a Christmas without the family can be a real nightmare for some while for others it was a real dream. It was a dream until this 2020 the dream has come true, the coronavirus pandemic has taken away the right to free complaint and they have found themselves face to face with an uncomfortable truth: maybe spending Christmas with the family is not It was as bad an idea as you’ve been saying for years.
- We are used to strictly complying with Christmas traditions without considering anything. We are used to complaining about having to go to the in-laws’ house on New Year’s Eve or having to put up with our brother-in-law on Christmas Eve. We are used to complying with Christmas protocols without getting to their essence and in a continuous complaint.
- And then this year 2020 the pandemic arrives and they tell us that, depending on your personal circumstances, you may not be able to see your family this Christmas. And how does that sound? Fatal, of course. But before the coronavirus, there were already many people who spent Christmas away from their family for work or financial reasons, and there were also many people who spent Christmas alone because they had no family to visit.
- Coming home for Christmas. Without a doubt, the perspective changes completely when you don’t spend Christmas with your family because you can’t than when you don’t come back because you don’t want to. And without a doubt, many people are going to have a hard time this year in particular, but it is convenient to relativize what it really means not spending Christmas with the family.
How to cope with Christmas without family
- Perhaps it will help you to think of all those people who spend Christmas alone year after year, who have to work on those special dates, who live too far from their family to return. Perhaps it helps you to think of people who have no family to return to, neither at Christmas nor at any time of the year.
- Or maybe it helps you more to think that giving up spending Christmas as a family this year is the guarantee so that next year you can all meet again. And maybe you don’t have to wait until next year. Why don’t you plan Christmas in August, for example? If what counts is the family reunion, the date does not matter.
- This year we need to relativize the meaning of Christmas. The negative part of not being able to see your family is very big, but you can try to make the positive part even bigger, which is the opportunity that this health crisis is giving us to value more everything we take for granted. Family, health, friends.
- Once you manage to reduce the drama of not being able to see your family this Christmas, you will have to find the strategies to cope in the best possible way. A video call at dinner time, comply with the traditions in your house, prepare for yourself the same menu as if you were with your family, put up the tree, decorate the house… or quite the opposite. Ignore that it’s Christmas, binge on series in your pajamas and eating pizza and enjoy, if you have them, a few days off without the stress of work.
- Can you think of any plans to cope with Christmas without your family? We read you in the comments!