The First Christmas Without Someone: What Helps

The first Christmas after somebody dies is hard in a particular way, and it helps to know why.

The day is built almost entirely out of repetition. The same food, the same seats, the same argument about the same thing, the same tin of chocolates. Repetition is what makes it Christmas, and it is also what makes every part of the day point directly at the person who is not there.

That is not a failure of coping. It is the structure of the day.

Decide in advance

The single most useful thing is to make the decisions in November, not on the morning.

Sit down, on your own or with whoever you are spending it with, and sort the day into three lists.

What we are keeping. The things that would hurt more to lose than to do.

What we are changing. Same day, different shape. Lunch out instead of at home. A different house. A walk in the middle. Presents in the evening rather than the morning.

What we are skipping this year. Explicitly this year, not for ever. The tree, the cards, the big meal, the extended family. Naming it as a one year decision makes it far easier to make.

The reason to do this in advance is that grief takes up most of the available decision-making, and a person standing in a kitchen on Christmas morning being asked whether they still want to do the stockings is being asked the hardest possible question at the worst possible moment.

Say the name

The most common fear is that mentioning the person will upset somebody. It usually gets the situation backwards.

Most bereaved people report that the loneliest part of a first Christmas is a room full of people carefully not saying a name that everybody is thinking about. The absence is already the loudest thing there. Naming it does not introduce it.

One sentence is enough. "I keep thinking about how he would have complained about this." "She would have hated this pudding." A small, specific, ordinary memory does more than a formal moment.

If you want to do something more structured, do it early in the day rather than at the meal, and keep it short: a toast, a candle, a place set, a walk to a particular spot. Long ceremonies at Christmas dinner tend to leave everybody stranded for the rest of the afternoon.

Expect the day to be uneven

Grief at Christmas is not a steady weight. It arrives in ambushes, usually attached to something small and stupid: a decoration in a box, a card arriving addressed to both of them, a song in a shop.

Knowing this in advance takes some of the force out of it. So does having an exit: a room to go to, a job outside, a dog to walk, and permission given in advance to use it without explaining.

National cancer institute guidance on bereavement makes the same point about the first year of anniversaries generally, which is that the anticipation is often worse than the day, and that a plan made ahead of time is worth more than any amount of resolve on the morning.

The practical things that help

• Eat and sleep. Grief and Christmas both wreck both. Almost every bad hour of a first Christmas has a skipped meal or a bad night behind it.
• Reduce the load. Buy the pudding. Order the food. Send fewer cards. This is a year to do less, and nobody is marking it.
• Answer the cards question early. If sending cards signed with one name where there were two is unbearable, do not send them. Nobody will hold it against you, and dealing with it in November rather than mid-December removes a whole week of dread.
• Watch the alcohol. It is a depressant and the day is long.

If you are the one supporting somebody

Be specific and be early. "Let me know if you need anything" puts the work back on the person who has the least capacity for it.

Better: "I am free on the 27th, shall I come at two?" "I am doing a food shop on Saturday, what shall I add?" "I will call at six on Christmas Day, answer or do not answer."

And keep going after December. The second half of January is materially harder than Christmas week for most people, because everybody else has gone back to normal and the phone stops. Our guide to gifts for someone grieving covers what genuinely helps, and what to say when someone dies covers the wording when you cannot find any.

Gifts, if you are giving one

The instinct is to give something cheerful. That is usually wrong, and the second instinct, to give something about the person who died, is right but needs care.

What tends to help:

• Something practical that removes a task. A meal delivered, a cleaner for a day, a food box.
• Time booked into the diary for January, when everybody else has gone quiet.
• Something with the person in it, given privately. Photographs they have not seen. A recording of their voice. A written memory of your own, which is a thing only you have and they cannot get anywhere else.

What to avoid: anything requiring immediate emotional performance in front of a room. A gift that will make somebody cry is a fine thing to give, and it should be given in a way that lets them do it alone if they need to.

A song about the person who died is one of the few things that can hold a first Christmas, and the timing matters more than the gift. Give it before the day or after it, quietly, not in the middle of the present-opening, and make sure they can play it for the first time on their own.

Our guides to gifts that make you cry and sentimental gifts cover the wider category, and there is more on the shape of a tribute in custom memorial song.

Next year

The first one is the worst, and not because it hurts most. It is the worst because you do not know what any of it is going to feel like yet.

By the second year most people know which parts they can do, which ones they cannot, and which of the traditions they changed they would like to change back. That knowledge is the thing this year is buying, and it is the only thing that makes it worth getting through rather than around.