How To Successfully Quiet Quit Your Family Christmas

Lets be honest, Christmas can be the best of times and the worst of times. And after the year I’ve had, all I really want Father Christmas to bring me is a lobotomy. Some years you eat delicious food, get on with all of your siblings and enjoy some crisp, cold walks. Some years you start on the pudding wine at 8am, the turkey burns and you end up looking for an emergency vet to pump a chocolate orange out of your labrador’s stomach. My personal feeling about Christmas, is that people let themselves down by making too much effort. The harder you try to make Christmas perfect, the further you have to fall. We have nipped this year in the bud by spending it alone, but were that not an option, I would have one plan - to quiet quit. If you can quiet quit your job, your relationship and your friendships, why not take a back seat on the most stressful day of the year?

I’m not trying to paint myself as a Scrooge. I usually thrive at Christmas. I love eating cheese and drinking champagne and bumming fags off long forgotten family friends at drinks parties. I love giving and getting and allocating characters from the Sound of Music to my siblings, just so we can laugh when we make my brother The Baroness. But more than anything, this year all I want for Christmas is a break.

This year I have no stomach for small talk, I don’t want to help you chop, I’m allergic to talk of politics and I have made enough memories with my children to last me until next year. You want to make a gingerbread house with them? Fabulous. I don’t need to be part of that memory for it to be treasured.

And so, if like me you’ve had a really hard year I invite you to follow these seven steps to successfully quiet quit your Christmas.