How was your christmas? The truthful answer

How was your christmas?  It is the most asked question on the first few days when returning to work back after the christmas holidays.  What to reply though can be hard.  Do you say the truth and that it was a hard, stressful time, that you hate christmas or do you put a smile on your face and say you had a great time?

This year I choose an answer in between the two.  I hate christmas I have done for the last few years after leaving university.  I find it very hard to deal the with the expectation of the perfect christmas, the hype and the perfect family time together.  2011 was my perfect Christmas.  I spent it in New Zealand where there was no hype, barely any Christmas decorations, no present buying or seeing relatives you really do not like.  In a way I got to avoid christmas, well being on the other side of the world did kind of help matters.

So the answer I gave when I went back to work this year was that christmas was not so good but I had an amazing new year week visiting friends many of which I had not seen in such a long time.  It does not mean that life is all bad, it isn't I have much to be thankful for but it does truthfully show that I hate the pressure and attitudes around christmas.

It is like when somebody asks you how are you and you put that brave face/mask on reply with I am fine.  What I really mean at that point is that I really want to say I am not fine but it is easier to say I am fine.  However, now I am trying to be more open about things and not just put the face on.  If I did not feel like getting up I say so or if I didn't have a great weekend I say so.  Few months ago I asked if I could move my lesson observation as I had had a really big personal thing happen to me and it was hard for me to be in school in the first place.  The Head agreed and even asked if I was still ok to be in school.  I said yes because I had not got to teach in the afternoon just take my class swimming.

I promise that I will try my best to be more truthful about how I feel.  That does not mean I continually go on about how low I am feeling but just acknowledge it and move on with the rest of my day.