⭐ A Midlife Guide to Keeping Calm at Christmas
Welcome to the inner sanctuary of the Middle-Aged and Slightly Overwhelmed Club. Here I present a midlife guide to keeping calm at Christmas that doesn’t involve copious amounts of mulled wine.
The kettle is on and the door is open – only metaphorically, of course, because the heating is on and the most commonly spoken sentence in this house right now is:
“Shut the door, the heating is on!”
So, here we are, nearly at Midwinter. Two weeks from the solstice and the longest night of the year. Two weeks and three days from Christmas Day. For me, this season is both exciting and exhausting — hence the slight overwhelm. The duality in me pulls hard. One part of me feels like I should be sparkly, social, festive — out there living my best mulled-wine-and-prosecco life.
But the other part?
She wants to crawl into bed with a cheese board, a Toblerone, and a hot water bottle. She wants to hibernate until the sun is finally ready to put in a sensible amount of effort.
⭐ The Festive Build-Up: Equal Parts Magic and Mayhem
Joking aside, the run-up to Christmas is a full-contact sport.
The shopping, the presents, the school events, the social events, the food… more food… even more food.
Eat. Sleep. Repeat.
Quite frankly, by the time the shops shut on Christmas Eve, I am ready for a holiday.
An actual holiday — with nothing to do.
Not the school Christmas holidays, where I have three over-excited, over-tired, over-stimulated children to feed constantly for two weeks. And a husband desperately searching for a new DIY project to start as part of his “strategic avoidance of the aforementioned children and general chaos.”
Anyway — what I meant to say is that I’ve been thinking about the winter solstice. That quiet lull nature slips into during the depths of winter. The slow exhale. The pause. And how far removed from that soft, peaceful moment my December experience actually is.
That’s why keeping calm at Christmas has been on my mind.
I often imagine what it must have been like hundreds of years ago. How ordinary people would have been hunkered down, sheltering, conserving energy, living through a season that was lean and cold. Not a time of supermarkets bursting with food and Christmas classics on repeat. But a time of survival rather than excess.
Right now, my world is lit up with fairy lights and festive cheer. It’s beautiful, but all-consuming. I’m pushing myself at a time when I’m fairly sure my ancestors would have been powering down.
But… it’s what we do, isn’t it?
⭐ Finding Peace in the Festive Chaos
It’s so easy to get swept away in the Christmas rush. I am just as susceptible to a little over-excitement, overtiredness and overstimulation as the kids. I suspect that’s why I found myself wide awake at 4am on Thursday morning. Sleep completely eluded me, so I crept downstairs to enjoy the morning hush.
Well… I planned to enjoy the hush curled up on the sofa with a book, but that didn’t happen.
What actually happened was that I ended up doing the previous night’s washing up. But honestly, it was quite lovely — and I never thought I’d say that about washing up. There I was, rinsing dishes in my pyjamas, with the moon shining through the kitchen window, silently observing me and my bubbles.
Then a carol drifted through the radio, good old Classic fm. I can’t even remember which one — but I do remember the goosebumps.
It was absolutely a mindful moment, born out of the most mundane task.
This is a good time to remember self-care.
Not 4am I hasten to add! I’m not suggesting everyone rises in the dark to commune with crockery — I mean this time of year.
This season.
This slightly chaotic, twinkly stretch where we need grounding more than ever.
And I know I keep harking back to it, but this is where the Five Ways to Wellbeing shine as brightly as the moon did that morning.
⭐ Keeping Calm at Christmas: The Five Ways to Wellbeing
That small, unexpected moment of peace — just me, the moon, and a sink full of suds — reminded me that calm doesn’t always arrive wrapped in serenity and scented candles. Life is not an Instagram photoshoot… not in this house anyway. Sometimes it shows up in pyjamas, with pruney fingers.
And that’s really what the Five Ways to Wellbeing are about.
Finding the tiny, grounding moments in the middle of life’s messiness.
Simple. Doable. Human.
Especially at this time of year, when everything feels louder, busier, brighter and just… more.
So here’s how I’m leaning into each of the Five Ways this Christmas.
Ways that feel gentle, doable, and perfectly aligned with midlife and meopausal energy levels (i.e., realistic, kind, and involving absolutely no 5am spin classes).
1. Take Notice
I did take notice.
I noticed the moon, and I noticed that rare moment of quiet before the household wakes up. Washing up isn’t glamorous. But setting the kitchen straight with the moon for company felt like a lovely, grounding start to the day.
I’m actually coming to enjoy those peaceful early mornings cloaked in darkness. A liminal space just for me, before the day begins. It feels magical, like I’ve created time from thin air.
And I’m starting to look forward to getting up early… which is something I NEVER thought possible.
2. Be Active
Yup, I can tick this one too.
I found a YouTube video with five minutes of stretches to do each morning — quick, achievable, and not at all intimidating. A long workout is off-putting, and I can easily acquiesce to the lazy part of me that resists and makes up all sorts of excuses, but five minutes? That I can manage.
And more often than not, the action creates the motivation.
Before I know it, I’ve added a few extra stretches.
To my utter delight, I think this has been boosting my energy levels. I know I have more energy because I ended up having a kitchen disco all by myself, dancing around to Christmas classics — not for the exercise, but simply because I felt like it.
And of course there are the soggy doggy walks to get me moving, motivated or not.
3. Connect
I have been connecting, which has been really lovely. After a period of high stress that made me retreat into myself, I’ve finally begun to come out of my shell again. I joined a friend for a walk, another for a coffee-making lesson, had a lunchtime tea natter, and even popped round to a friend’s with a bottle of prosecco one evening because it was almost my birthday.
Sitting here reflecting on it, I’m actually a little surprised by how sociable I’ve been. And it does make me wonder… is this because my energy levels have improved? Or have these little moments of connection been part of boosting them?
What came first — the chicken or the egg?
The energy or the connections?
I’ll ponder on that later.
4. Keep Learning
For my birthday I got some new gardening books — because you can never have too many! Snuggling into bed on a cold winter night with a good book is bliss. Honestly, I’d be quite happy to go to bed as soon as I finish work. But apparently you do have to feed children regularly or they follow you around moaning.
One of these new books contained a very interesting little fact. It delighted the nerd in me so completely that I’ve told everyone I know about it — some people twice.
I think it’s quite well known that sharks are pretty good at smelling out blood in the water. They can detect the chemicals in blood at one part per million. Impressive, yes indeed.
But here’s the bit I didn’t know. Humans can smell geosmin — the earthy scent after rain, what we call petrichor — at five parts per trillion!
That makes us around 200,000 times more sensitive to geosmin than a shark is to blood in the water.
How amazing is that?
Even though my midlife brain sometimes feels like it’s running on Windows 95, it’s still capable of wonder and awe! The old grey matter still lights up at the smallest, strangest pieces of knowledge. I’m now waiting for the day this comes up in a pub quiz so I can show off.
And honestly, I love having something new to think about when I’m lying awake at 3am.
It makes a refreshing change from the usual existential angst. That and the replay of every embarrassing thing I’ve ever done or said in my life.
5. Give
It’s nearly Christmas, so you’d think “giving” would be the obvious one — after all, I have been buying a lot of presents, right?
Well… yes and no.
In the past, I’ve stressed myself silly over what to buy people. There’s a lot of pressure at this time of year! So with a view to keeping calm at Christmas I’ve started to rethink what giving actually means.
I adore hedgehogs — they’re my favourite animal.
(There is a point to this; it’s not just a menopausal tangent.)
In the past we’ve bought charity Christmas cards. But with the cost of stamps constantly going up and the general busyness of the season they are often forgotten.
So this year, I decided to let that little chore go.
Instead, I’m donating the money directly to our local hedgehog charity and simply wishing people a Merry Christmas. I’m sure people would happily forgo my card if it helps a hedgehog.
It’s a drop in the ocean, but it feels good to me. Rather than spending on something that’s ultimately going in the bin, I’m giving support to something I care deeply about.
The kids and I are going to make some Christmas cards for the family instead. That will be a jolly little project and something creative we can do together. A win all round, I feel.
Well… maybe not for the Post Office.
⭐ Keeping Calm at Christmas Starts With the Smallest Things
So here I am: middle-aged, menopausal, slightly overwhelmed — but I’m okay.
By leaning into the Five Ways to Wellbeing, I know I can carry on until January downtime. Running on cups of tea, random shark facts, and questionable sleep patterns for a little while longer.
In the end, it’s not the big gestures that are keeping me afloat this December. It’s the small, ordinary things. Keeping calm at Christmas can be simple. Just like noticing the moon, stretching for a few minutes, reconnecting with people in gentle quiet ways, learning interesting things, giving in ways that matter to me, and finding sanctuary in soap suds.
These tiny moments are my anchor points — reminders that even in the overwhelm, there is still space for calm, curiosity, and care.
And as we edge towards the solstice, I’m choosing to lean into that.
Keeping calm at Christmas Mental health
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