Let’s stop pretending Christmas is just for children.

We all need to embrace the magic this year.

I had no idea I actually liked Christmas. In fact, I typically cook up a mix of excitement, stress and embarrassment at this time of year, but this year I’m tapping into some pre-adult superpowers. 

My muted excitement is usually triggered as the smell of pine blends with sticky, ‘clovesy’ concoctions and distant sparkly bells hijack every sound. This quickly turns to embarrassment as my middle-aged self kicks in to scold me for buzzing over such chintz and frippery. How could I succumb to such saccharine schmaltz? And how could such earnest and garish displays of enforced ‘joy’ penetrate my ironic tastes?   

But in my second act, I find myself strangely more drawn to the smells and bells and I think this might expose a big fat lie I’ve been telling myself. And if you are too you may be missing an opportunity to refill your fantasy cup. 

Last night, I failed to hit the skip button in time as a news broadcast poured the treacly substance of the Christmas musical music down my unconsenting gullet. The musical is my least favorite genre of all. Still, I experienced a zombie-like compulsion to replay the songs three times as Ms. Poppins transported me to a truly magical place of my childhood where Christmas meant abundance, hope and an otherworldly, technicolored joy. Remember when the TV networks would save up the most fantastical movies for Christmas and when devouring them was a spectacular treat? The TV guide was just as overflowing with mouthwatering delights as the Christmas pantry. We’d stock up on delicacies that would barely get a glance the rest of the year - and that’s why they sparked such giddiness.  Christmas entertainment was the same as the yuletide feast. Those tinkling tweaks to the music and the parade of magical movies electrified my 9-year-old self so wholeheartedly that their aftershocks still work on me today. 

So moved have I been that this year that I’m breaking a 16-year boycott and heading back to my childhood home in the UK for Christmas, ending a freeze that was driven by cost, poor climatic conditions (3 pm sunsets, if you could call it ‘sun’) and a family of scrooges. But Puritan America expresses this guilt much more than the UK, with its euphemistic naming of the season as ‘holiday’ and careful removal of incriminating iconography from shop windows for fear of privileging one ritual over another. The UK divorced the celebration from religion generations ago, so have fewer qualms about fully smothering itself in Santa’s trimmings. Added to the fact that the whole of the UK is plunged into gothic darkness for the entire season - making fairy lights and uplifting songs a survival necessity.  But adults in both countries need this time more than they realize, and not only for rest but also to recharge our capacity for play and wonder. We too have a duty to practice the art of reanimation. Yes, rest is about pausing what exhausts us, but it is also about restocking ourselves with the functions we need to live and work better. The greatest curse of adulthood is jadedness. At Christmas we have a yearly opportunity to throw that out and refill our childlike wonder pot; not just by witnessing children, but being them too. 

I don’t believe I’m alone in this melting of my cold ‘adulty’ prejudices. I’ve noticed the Danish word ‘hygge’ has crept out of the shadows this year and not just for Christmas when familial cozyness is most appropriate. It is in abundance in TV shows, music and pop culture as cozy gets cool with trends like ‘Grandpacore’ and ‘Cozy TikTok.’  I even found myself clicking on videos of Richard E Grant’s cozy interiors (he lights hundreds of candles every night you know!), and Nigela’s generously sensorial takes on Christmas entertaining. (What’s happening to me?) . So let’s stop pretending we’re beyond those childish cravings. In a recent study we ran in the UK, we found that Gen Z aren’t shy about expressing surprisingly traditional views around Christmas, family and chocolate - so why should I be? 

Perhaps this is all a reaction to the harsh realities outside our frosted windows. As we barricade ourselves from a Dickensian winter of endless wars, political peril and post pandemic anxiety, we relate more to the warm and uniting imagery of Bob Cratchit’s family. And maybe this is why I’m finally returning to mine. I’ve been predicting the mid 2020s to be an echo of the 1920s for a while now, and, as we cross the threshold I believe that 2025 might finally deliver some of that ritzy reckless abandon.  2025 will be a year with a second Trump presidency, an accelerated march towards AI in all walks of life and some reckonings on the climate challenge, but if we’re to succeed in this harsher landscape we’ll need to retrain ourselves to play, imagine and fantasize like we did when we hunkered down in front of those magical Christmas spectacles in the good old days.