We have said it, read it, and are experiencing it on our own skin: this year (the supersextile 2020) the Christmas and end-of-year holidays will be different than usual because of the pandemic and all its health, economic, social, and psychological consequences.
Therefore, if normally the Christmas Blues, a depressive and stressful situation, affects only a certain number of people who due to personological structure, existential discomfort, special conditions react to the Christmas atmosphere with difficulty, suffering and closure, this year seems to affect us all a bit, even those who generally experience the Holidays with great motivation and cheerfulness
In fact, we all (more or less) experience what has been called pandemicfatigue, which is a characteristic reaction when faced with adverse, prolonged, unpredictable events with little chance of individual resolution.
The social distancing, the strictness and limitations, the absence of tables of friends and relatives, late-night aperitifs and toasts, for some the enforced condition of loneliness-all these surely risk accentuating all the tendencies of Christmas sadness. So if sometimes the idealized expectation of a “perfect” Christmas, family, meal, etc., disappointingly and painfully clash with aspects of reality, this year we will also have to accept the confrontation with our own personal experience of the Holidays being prevented. Nostalgia may be activated with respect to past holidays with an expanded sense of loss and loneliness, beyond the objective lack of contact and physical closeness.
Each of us will have to implement reorganization not only in practical terms but also emotionally: Accept one’s sadness (it is not a shame or a sin), Create new rituals of reference, focus (i.e., recognize and value) What one has rather than what one lacks, Accept their own and reality’s limitations.
A final thought. Paradoxically, the collective lowering of expectations and possibilities, involving a reduction in social pressure, may produce symptomatic relief for some of the people suffering from Christmas Blues.
