Carle Jasmin (Image: AI-generated / Gay Globe)
One of the great misconceptions of modern societies is believing that during the holiday season, everyone spontaneously transforms into a ball of joy, spreading happiness, gratitude, and Christmas spirit everywhere, as if the festive atmosphere alone could soften even the hardest hearts. This appealing, almost comforting idea often belongs more to magical thinking than to the reality experienced by a large part of the population.
The holiday season: an intimate and revealing period
Throughout the rest of the year, people generally move at the same pace as society as a whole. Yet, the holiday season breaks this balance and becomes a much more intimate period, influenced by religious beliefs, culture, personal history, and Christmas traditions. This personalization acts as a spotlight, highlighting gaps that are sometimes masked during the rest of the year.
Traditional images versus reality
Family dinners, Christmas music, colorful decorations, gift exchanges, smiles, and New Year’s parties form the collective imagination associated with Christmas and New Year’s. Yet for many, these idealized images mostly bring back painful realities. Loneliness, financial anxiety, holiday stress, and the lack of means to spoil children or family become overwhelming. Even more troubling, nearly 40% of the population today struggles to eat properly, resorting to food banks, even among workers.
Housing crisis, inflation, and precarity: holidays far from joyful
In this context, speaking of celebration is difficult. The housing crisis rages on, rents soar for often dilapidated housing, and wages stagnate while inflation soars, whether at the grocery store or the gas pump. For many, the holiday season is not an enchanted break, and their weariness is perfectly understandable.
Dr. Pierre Mailloux and his view on the holiday blues
Dr. Pierre Mailloux, a psychiatrist and well-known media personality in Quebec, hosted a daily show on CKAC from 1995 to 2007, where he candidly explained various psychological realities. One day, he responded to a listener who said she sank into a deep winter depression every year during the holidays, despite feeling obliged to be joyful. She suffered from persistent holiday blues and intense seasonal anxiety, forcing her to take sick leave.
“Doc Mailloux” told her that the causes didn’t really matter. He explained that many people make themselves sick trying to explain the unexplainable. Why struggle to understand a recurring malaise when it would be simpler to admit that this period just doesn’t suit her, without guilt or pretending?
Allowing oneself to experience the holidays in one’s own way
He suggested she accept this natural fact and not fight against this discomfort. Instead of forcing herself, she could let others celebrate their way and allow herself to do what truly felt good. Eating chips in bed with a beer while watching an old movie, ordering barbecue chicken with a glass of rosé, enjoying herself without guilt: by granting herself these small pleasures, the holiday season could become a time when she finally gave herself permission to be herself.
A friend’s testimony: disconnecting to reconnect
A close friend, likewise, dislikes the holidays because of bad family memories. Instead of forcing a fake happiness, he announces on Facebook that he’s leaving for three weeks in the south, leaving his phone at home. No one invites him, which is exactly what he wants. He uses the time to visit exhibitions and museums, truly indulging himself, just like Doc Mailloux recommended.
The holiday blues, a natural feeling to accept
The holiday blues are more common than people think. There is no point in fighting it, as it is a natural feeling, similar to seasonal depression. We can give ourselves permission to accept it and even make it a festive time, just for ourselves.
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