Ways I failed this Christmas

Ding dong merrily on WHYYYY

Jan 08, 2026

The topic of this newsletter has been sloshing around in my brain like a washing machine refusing to drain. It first appeared on Boxing Day, and I hoped it would go away by New Year. But here we are, and I am still stuck waiting for that cold, stale water to drain away.

I will never be good at changes to routine. My routine is my life vest. I do the same things, in the same way, every day/week. I don’t get bored. These things keep me safe and happy.

But sometimes, you have to deviate from routine. Christmas break is one such example.

I approached this festive break thinking I would take it easy, leave social events early, and put my own needs first. All great on paper. But I didn’t consider the huge impact this massive shift in routine would have on us all as a household, especially my 3.5-year-old daughter, who is also a lover of routine (she wakes up every day wanting to know exactly what will happen, where she will go, and who she will see).

Anyway, it’s safe to say I dropped the ball a bit. Even before Christmas hit, I’d already had a few meltdowns and was struggling with parenting while managing my own emotions and household tasks.

The title of this newsletter is a bit of clickbait, as I would like to be kinder to myself and say I didn’t fail, per se, but I definitely made some mistakes.

So, here it goes.

My catharsis that you subscribed to receive.

Animated GIF of Bart Simpson setting fire to a Christmas Tree

Here are the ways I failed at Christmas:

I forgot about grief

I’ve written extensively about this before (this piece is a good intro), but the TL;DR of it is that my mam died in 2019. And now, 2019 feels like both five minutes and an entire lifetime ago.

Don’t get me wrong, grief is a constant in my life. There is always a gaping hole where the most important person once was, and that hole never gets smaller; I just get better at stepping around it. But sometimes, usually on birthdays or other special occasions, I fall in.

This Christmas, I felt her loss more intensely than in the past, and I don’t really know why. Perhaps I always do this, and then I just erase it from my memory. Either way, I am still shocked every time I fall in that damn hole, even though it’s always there.

I left no room for change

The festive period was tightly packed this year. Work deadlines kept busy ‘til the 22nd, and then I had quite a few social plans and other family commitments around Christmas, in particular. I tried my best to stick to my routine (running, eating, reading), as these are the activities that ground me. But then, on the night before Christmas Eve, our eldest greyhound Potter woke up in the night and was sick all owa.

He spent Christmas Eve pretty unwell and, within a few hours, I had convinced myself he was dying.

Again, without going into too much detail about this bloody dog (you can read about him and his sister here), he is more than just a pet to me. We adopted him a few days before my mam died, and he carries a lot of transferred grief on his arthritic legs.

Anyway, back to Christmas Eve. I ended up taking him to an out-of-hours vet appointment that evening. I waited over half an hour in the waiting room, fully expecting to be told he was on his way out. Maybe he wouldn’t see 2026 after all. But an anti-nausea injection and some chicken and rice later, and he’s bounced back. Turns out the idiot probably ate some crap off the floor on a walk and gave himself food poisoning.

I can laugh about that drama now, but it wasn’t funny at the time. I was crying most of Christmas Eve, and unable to interact with my daughter or even Craig, as I was completely engulfed in this dark pit.

The lesson here is that the festive schedule was so packed that one bump in the road (felt like a pretty big one to me) was enough to push me into a really bad place. I don’t think I overreacted by taking him to the vet I am glad I did, but I do think my severe emotional reaction was worsened by all the other ingredients bobbing about in the cauldron of life.

I need to remember not to overfill it, or it’ll all boil over again.

I set too high expectations

If you asked me about this in December, I’d have said I was planning “a chilled one”. But it turns out my perception of a chilled Christmas is still far, far too much for me. I went out too much and, what I feel most guilty about, I expected too much of our daughter, too.

She, like me, struggles with changes to her routine, but I underestimated what that would mean (and suffered the consequences). When people ask, “How was your Christmas?” part of me wants to lie and say great! But the other part wants to admit it was, actually, not very good. In large part due to our toddler’s behaviour, which reached a crescendo on Christmas Day, after far too many presents and no routine in sight.

I want to make it clear that none of this is her fault. As the adults, we are in charge of regulating both ourselves and her, but I didn’t do a very good job of either.

Fortunately, I realised this and implemented some familiar structures, tidied up our living spaces, and dug out the safe foods on Boxing Day. As a result, the rest of the holiday went by in a much calmer way.

Lessons learned?

I don’t know if I will be able to change any of these things next year, but I’ll have another year of life (and parenting) experience under my belt, and my daughter will be older, so I am optimistic that it’s only going to get better from here.

My biggest takeaway is probably that I need to learn my capacity and stick to it. It might seem that other people can manage a lot more than I (socialising, parenting activities, etc), but that’s because they 1. aren’t me and 2. their child(ren) isn’t mine.

So, in 2026, it’ll be more about finding and setting my limits, and less about comparing to others.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

💌 About this email

I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.

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