The Quiet Weight of Christmas
I keep hearing the phrase, “it always happens at this time of year”.
I’ve said it myself this week, sitting at my mother’s house in Scotland after she was taken ill. It’s December, Christmas is close and suddenly everything feels heavier than it might have done at any other point in the year.
I’ve been wondering whether it really is the season itself…or whether it’s the pressure wrapped around the season that changes how things land.
December isn’t just another month. It carries expectation, memory, tradition, togetherness. There’s an unspoken agreement that things are meant to be okay. And when something difficult arrives inside that window, it can feel like a bigger rupture, even if the event itself would have been just as worrying in March or September.
When I zoom out, I can see that life doesn’t actually reserve its hardest moments for Christmas. People get ill, plans change and fear shows up. We manage these things all year long. December just shines a brighter light on them. The contrast between what we hope for and what is happening makes everything feel sharper.
There’s also a quieter grief in this space. The grief of wanting things to be simple…and finding they aren’t. Wanting an easy, familiar Christmas rhythm and instead navigating uncertainty, logistics, and worry. That grief doesn’t always announce itself loudly, but it is real for sure.
This week I left my children in London to be with my mum. My daughter is 10 years old, and she cried the morning I left because Christmas means something very specific to her. It means me being there. It means safety, tradition, reassurance. Layered onto that was her worry about her grandmother, even if she couldn’t fully articulate it. Two emotions at once, both big for a small body.
Holding that as a parent is hard. You’re trying to be present for everyone, while knowing you can’t physically be everywhere. There’s guilt, sadness, and responsibility all jostling for space.
My brother has flown over from the USA to see mum, which adds another layer. When someone crosses an ocean, our minds translate that into seriousness. It amplifies the moment, even if the reality is still unfolding.
I’m aware, as a coach, that I can name what’s happening. I understand how our nervous systems scan for threat, how emotionally charged seasons shape our stories, how our brains connect dots that feel true even when they aren’t the full picture. And still, knowing that doesn’t exempt me from feeling it.
What I’m sitting with today is this. December isn’t cursed - it’s concentrated. It magnifies whatever is already there…love, fear, hope, pressure. When something hard happens, it’s not that it always happens now. It’s that now makes it harder to hold.
I don’t have a neat ending or a lesson to wrap this up. Just a reminder I’m offering myself as much as anyone else. It’s okay to acknowledge the weight of this season without turning it into a story about an assumption made over time “it always happens at this time of year”. It’s okay to let things be serious without assuming the worst. And it’s okay to want things to be simpler, even when they aren’t.
Sometimes the most honest thing we can do is notice what’s here, breathe, and take the next steady step.
