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I would venture to guess that while most of us who grew up celebrating Christmas have heard that it’s the most wonderful time of the year, we know, in our heart of hearts, it’s just another month. But we feel sad about it all the same, as though we should feel that way. We spend the month longing and lacking, as though everyone else spends their December in a Coca-Cola Christmas ad.

The holiday blues means temporary anxiety or depression during the holiday season. While there are some very real reasons to be sad right now, and for some, Christmas is always a diffi cult time, the blues refer to a more general malaise that you cannot quite place.

Poignantly, festivities only exist because our pagan ancestors knew that life was tough at the end of the year. To stay healthy, we needed to rely on our social bonds, our oldest evolutionary tool. However, it seems we’ve lost sight of this. Surveys show that over a quarter of us struggle with the festive expectation to be happy. The holidays do little more than act as a magnifying glass on our internal state, heightening our sadness and stress.

So now, as the omicron variant erases most expats’ festive plans with etch-a-sketch speed, I asked clinical psychologist Talia Zamorano Macchiavello to help me understand how we can navigate the it-should-be-different trap.

Macchiavello explains that the blues are a common phenomenon, because the festive period “connects us with our feelings of when we were children and when holidays were felt to be a perfect time… there’s no happiness like the joy you felt as a child”. Essentially, the holidays remind us of a childlike happiness that we think we’ve lost, which leads to a sense of melancholia.

However, we all have different reactions to that loss. Some of us will cling to the past as the truth. Macchiavello notes that it is particularly common in people who struggle with anxiety, as we try to perpetually recreate that perfect happiness, only to feel let down that Christmas isn’t like it’s ‘supposed to be’. Others avoid festivities altogether, knowing only that they don’t want to face the feelings of loss.

I can use a story from my own anxiety-driven life to help us understand this. When I was 13, my mum’s Christmas present to me was a GHD hair straightener (dead-straight hair was all the rage in Ireland circa 2009), and like a perfectly spoiled teen, I cried my eyes out. My mum was understandably annoyed with me, it was a great gift, and I was as upset at my own selfi shness as she was. So, why? Why the crying?

I wasn’t disappointed with the present itself; I had wanted it. I was disappointed with my own reaction to the gift. I had been expecting to feel a childlike sense of joy, and instead, I was met with a more adult watered-down version. And it is precisely in that gap – between what we thought there was and what there is – that we fi nd the root of our heartache.

But it could also be (or at least, it is to a Lacanian psychoanalyst) that what we do when we’re in that gap – how we deal with that difference between our fantasy and our reality – is where we fi nd our life’s meaning and purpose.

Above all else, Macchiavello recommends trying to accept those negative emotions. She highlights that “when we tell ourselves not to feel a certain way, or that we are doing it ‘wrong’, all we’re doing is throwing our inner critic into an already painful situation”.

It can also help to become curious about your own reactions. For example, the festive period invokes, in Macchiavello’s words, “primal feelings of comfort, love and fullness, which in turn connect us with a sense of loss and alienation”. Observing how you react to these feelings will give you signifi cant insights into your unconscious relationship with loss, change and endings. Poignantly, this is exactly what winter is all about.

Written by Molly Fitz

Every country has its heroes – people who have made such an impact on the country that their infl uence and legacy go beyond themselves. Of course there is the father of the Netherlands, William of Orange; wartime monarch, Queen Wilhelmina, and incomparable troubled artist, Vincent van Gogh, who are world-renowned heroes of the Netherlands. But even today there are people making such an impact that they are like modern-day, living heroes destined for enduring legendary status. One such person is middle- and long-distance runner Sifan Hassan. gold medal in both the 1500 meter and 10,000 meter races, as well as bronze on the 5000. This achievement, plus the two gold medals in the world championship in 2019 in Doha, elevated this Ethiopian-born athlete to being the only runner – male or female – to have won two of the middle- and long-distance categories in a single world championship or Olympics. Her Dutch and European medals, records and accolades are far too many to mention here, and to top it all off, Hassan is the current world record holder for the women’s mile, having broken a 23-year-old record.

Hassan’s two gold medals in the pinnacle events of Olympic track and fi eld won the hearts of the millions of Dutch people and captured the eye of the world as they watched her perform. So amazing is her running, that when she took a fall at the beginning of the qualifying heats for the 1500 meter race, she was able to not only get up but was able to turn on the jets in her legs to make up over 20 meters lost and win her heat. It’s a feat that can only be described as a miracle, even at the Olympics! Seriously, do a search for ‘Sifan Hassan Tokyo 1500 meter fall’ to see the replay!

On her athleticism alone, Sifan Hassan is a modern-day hero. Her jaw-dropping speed and perseverance put her in a class of her own. Her medals, accolades and records at every level of offi cial competition have solidifi ed her in the sporting history books. And her almost-shy, humble demeanor with a beaming smile of pride won over the hearts of her fellow Dutch citizens, who love their heroes – especially their sporting heroes – when she made her rounds on the heavily-watched Dutch evening TV talk shows.

But I think that Sifan will be a hero beyond her athletic accolades. She most defi nitely will be a role model to many track and fi eld dreamers – here in the Netherlands and in her birth country, Ethiopia – but also a role model to many new immigrants coming into the country. She moved here when she was 15 and received utch citi enship fi ve years later – which means she learned Dutch and was fully integrated into daily life in the Netherlands, including learning a new language with a new alphabet. And she only began to run when she started her nursing studies, aged 20. Three years later she made her debut on the European competitive stage in Belgium.

For newcomers to the Netherlands, especially from countries and world regions that have different cultures, integration into a new culture can be daunting. Seeing a person who was once an immigrant integrate into a new foreign culture and succeed at such a level must be incredibly inspiring for newly arriving refugees and foreigners to the Netherlands. She is an incredible inspiration for me – and I moved to the Netherlands because I wanted to, not because I had to fl ee my home country. People like Sifan Hassan will inspire people beyond what they themselves do – for Sifan, this is running, but she will be a role model for many more people beyond our future track and fi eld stars.