Christmas Day Has Always Been a Mixed Feeling for Me

Christmas Day has always been a kind of mixed feeling for me.

I love the Christmas season. If you want me to feel good, twinkly lights will do it. An excuse for a glass of red wine. The smells, the festivities, the planning — all of it fills my heart with excitement.

But as the day gets nearer, something shifts.

I become anxious. Slightly low. My energy shrinks. I’m more tired, more emotional, more sensitive. And over the years I’ve realised there are probably several reasons for that.

As someone who grew up as an empath, Christmas can feel like a lot of pressure. There are so many layers of emotion happening all at once. Family interactions. The energy behind the façade of smiles and yay, it’s Christmas. The frustrations. The unspoken feuds you can feel even when no one mentions them.

There’s also the pressure of receiving a gift from someone and feeling that tidal wave of expectation behind it. Needing to respond in the right way. Getting your expression exactly right. And if you don’t, sensing the disappointment that follows. That kind of energetic exchange can be really hard to hold.

Then there’s the practical side. You’re not eating how you normally eat. You’re not moving how you normally move. Your routine disappears. That alone affects energy far more than we realise.

And layered on top of that are family dynamics — who to see, when to see them, how to keep everyone happy — often at the expense of your own needs. For anyone who has spent a lifetime being sensitive or people-pleasing, it’s very easy to lose yourself at Christmas.

Add in the seasonal weather, especially here in the UK, the knowledge that we’re a long way from sunshine and warmth, and it can all start to feel heavy.

When my grandmother was younger, we almost always spent Boxing Day at her house. Spirit still shows it to me in exactly the same way every time. That feeling of arriving, ringing the doorbell, hearing the voices inside, and knowing that all the people I loved were just on the other side of that door. Great food. Laughter. A party atmosphere.

In many ways, that’s how spirit shows me the other side now — like turning up at my grandmother’s on Boxing Day.

My grandmother and grandfather were good fun. They liked a drink. They liked a dance. These were proper parties, wrapped in that misty, memory-soft energy of 80s and 90s Christmas trees, proper tinsel, and loud conversation.

As my grandmother got older, she stopped hosting, which was understandable. My grandfather had passed quite young, and without him things limped along, but it was never quite the same.

And since my grandmother passed, my family has fractured. They no longer speak. There’s a wedge there now, a separation that feels particularly sharp at Christmas. The loss. The grief of the season.

My children are older now, and Christmas isn’t what it once was when they believed. We still have a lovely time, and there is so much to be grateful for — but there is also a quiet sadness in my heart at this time of year.

So if Christmas feels like that for you too, you’re not doing anything wrong.

I think it’s perfectly normal. Christmas is a navigational time, especially for those of us who are sensitive, who feel deeply, who work with energy. And perhaps the great irony is this — when you want to feel spirit most, when you reach for them, they can feel further away.

But look at what the season does to your life. Your routine disappears. The quiet moments are lost. The time you normally use to reset slips away. Of course that has an impact.

Sometimes it’s not that spirit isn’t there.

It’s that we’ve lost the space we usually meet them in.