I have friends who look with envy at my solitary state at Christmas. They complain about having to face the holidays with family. And as everyone knows, you put Christmas decorations, Christmas cheer, add in a few Christmas relatives, heat with Christmas emotions, throw in a Christmas turkey and baste gently for a day and you have a recipe for a dish that could leave a stink for the rest of the year.

So my friends or workmates say goodbye as they pack up their bags or tidy up their desks, bemoaning their upcoming stress with envious asides to me about my luck at not having to face it all. And in a way, they are right. I don’t have to deal with Christmas if I don’t want to. I can stay in my house, shut off the TV, pull the curtains, and pretend that the week is just like any other week of the year. Which it is. And that is the problem.

In my adult years, I’ve always grumbled about Christmas because it is the time of the year when everyone leaves to go home. And as the non-religion-practicing child of a Christian priest, I experienced every Christmas Day in the same way that the ill child of the town doctor probably views an annual flu epidemic. So I have to admit to underlying mixed emotions about Christmas. But I still don’t understand why there is a specific period set aside when people make that extra effort to be nice to each other. And why they then stress about it.

When people complain to me about the stress of Christmas I have to wonder why they do everything on that one day of the year that they would avoid on other days of the year. If they don’t particularly like turkey on any ordinary day why make it at Christmas, douse it with gravy, stuff it to bursting to make it palatable and then invite relatives they wouldn’t want in their home at any other time to partake in this self-described misery. And then complain and envy the turkey-less zone on the other side of the fence.

I get invitations to go to the homes of my friends and I appreciate that immensely. More than I appreciate the laments of envy. But, if I face my truth, I have to admit that what I want is to stay home for Christmas and more importantly to ‘be’ home. If I had my perfect Christmas, love, laughter and the doggies (which would actually be my perfect day any day of the year), I probably wouldn’t remember to invite those who were on their own, but I’d appreciate what I had enough to never tell them that I envied what they had.

I admire and envy those who have the family, love, and laughter, as part of their everyday lives and for whom Christmas is the time to add the icing to the cake but with no stress about how the cake looks, just that it is sweeter, richer and the cake is held tighter together. I admire those who don’t complain about the layers of unnecessary icing they’re slapping onto their cake to someone who hasn’t yet got the right cake.

If you had the choice of recipe and unlimited access to the ingredients to make a truly happy day, why choose a recipe that called for unnecessary ingredients, gave you indigestion, and swore you off having that dish again for at least another 364 days?

Don’t envy me because I have the recipe but no access yet to all the necessary ingredients. When the missing ingredients arrive, I hope to make that dish every day and not just over the Christmas. Then, the only extra ingredient I’ll add over the holidays is more time just to savor the experience.