How to Solo Christmas

In the dead of winter, basking in the unnatural glow

Below is an archive piece I wrote for Blizzard Comedy in 2022 about spending Christmas 2021 alone when I had covid- secretly one of my favourite Christmases.

This year, I’m doing Christmas with my girlfriend Robbie, just the two of us, and I’ve been thinking back to that isolation Christmas. The peace, the vibes, the lack of scheduling. And love, whatever the distance.

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First person view from my sick bed/sofa, Christmas 2021. Chalk, water colour pencil, posca pen.

Waking up on the sofa on Christmas morning, alone and wheezing, to no family, to friends, no visit from Santa. Can I tell you, I fucking loved it? Christmas by myself with no gifts, the unthinkable?

I’d found out I’d probably got covid while on a train to a gig in Leeds with my mask hanging off my ear having a coffee on a crowded, poorly ventilated train, like a wankstain. I put it back on and layered on two more from my bag as I turned around at Sheffield and cried down the phone to my grandparents I’d just visited, begging them to get PCRs. My symptoms started that night.

Then I had covid, and everything became the soft, warm cloud of pain and basic necessities. I didn’t care about much except when my next 16-hour nap was starting, and if I could text my roommate to ask for another lemsip. The only relief was that I didn’t have to worry about catching covid anymore, cos I had covid. I hadn’t realised how much of a burden that had been these past two years.

My self-isolation ran over Christmas Day, and I was gonna ignore covid Christmas like the high-flying CEO in a Hallmark Christmas movie, but leaving Yule unmarked on the 21st was devastating, so Christmas had to be, just for my own sake. I arrived at Christmas Eve dragging my feet, but I’d decided I was going to make a thing of it. I pretended I wasn’t going to be alone up until my roommate locked the door behind him when the crispy glass exterior shattered on me, and I had a bit of a cry. Not a big one, and that was important. A small cry, and then I chopped my roast veg for Christmas dinner listening to old carols. I worked in retail, I couldn’t deal with Christmas pop music that had been on infinite repeat since November. All the Christmas carols I could find were all children’s choirs singing impossibly high; they are beautiful and perfect and you cannot sing along with them. I needed to sing along with someone. But I was on my own.

I’d seen a tweet somewhere about going on holiday in your own house, camping out in a different room for a change of scenery. It felt right to sleep on the sofa we’d bought in the height of the pandemic explicitly for guests. I knew that if I woke up in my room on Christmas morning, I wouldn’t be getting out of bed- the thought of a dark, empty living room too much to bear. Best keep it small, make the living room and the kitchen my own little studio flat. Running into the dark and lonely upstairs to piss like running to an outhouse in a blizzard. I’d spend the Holy Day on the sofa with the telly and the Christmas tree, basking in their unnatural glow.

I’d done a radio thing a few days before Christmas, timing my coughing between the host’s very generous song breaks and using up almost all my lemsip. They were going to call me back Christmas morning and give me my own personal 9am Christmas party. The radio woke me up on the sofa at 8am and I turned all the Christmas lights on, and I basked in the multicolored glow and then I ate an entire stollen whole like a snake. Through various situations you can blame on society, my relationship with my girlfriend isn’t public, and won’t be for a while. But I love her so much. We’ll get there. When the radio host Laurie asked me about my plans for the day, I told her how much I was looking forward to remotely playing Animal Crossing with My Girlfriend later in the day. I knew She was listening. That was important. And talk about Grand Romantic Gestures when I couldn’t even leave the house. I hadn’t even got out of bed. Sofa.

Christmas dinner was easy, I’d done all my prep the day before when I needed all those little processes to get out of my head. It was still late, I turned the oven off when things were done left everything in with the door cracked- not cooking but keeping warm. I was playing Animal Crossing with my girlfriend and that was more important. Covid had demolished my sense of taste and smell a few days prior and even though it was coming back, everything tasted like sugary, chemically, half-rotten cigarettes. And cigarettes smell like burning, a smell I’d quickly made a habit of ignoring. In the case of my poor Yorkshire puddings, this was an error. I could get them out of the oven and laugh about them with my girlfriend on zoom at my own pace. No failures. I soaked them in gravy, and they were fiiiine.

I called my family, an hour each, having a nice chat and cramming that good-will and Christmas cheer into screen. I would have loved to have hugged my grandparents, but I was okay. As I nested down in front of The Hogfather, messages started pouring into my group chats. Christmas is a hard time for queer people, and families are tough. Parents getting way inappropriate gifts or misgendering their children or making fun of their “phase”. Arguments happening on this yearly ‘civil’ visit. The line we would use now is “family is hard, Christmas is stressful but it’s all worth it in the end”. And I was on my sofa, with a blanket, a stuffed pig, and a resounding peace. I’d never taken care of myself that way, really treated myself well. Treating myself usually involves a guilt shaped whole in my bank account and some procrastination. I’d got up early and prepared the day before, and it was all for me. I’d like to do it all for me again sometime. I don’t know what the true meaning of Christmas is, but I think I got a good look at it alone on that sofa.

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Upcoming Shows:

• Spine Hygiene, Aces and Eights, London, 14th January, tickets tbc

• Spine Hygiene, Leicester Comedy Festival, 16th February
  17:00, Phoenix- The Nest - this show is right before Club Wormhole so do see both together for an incredibly silly Sunday Night

• Spine Hygiene, Saturday 15th March - 7pm-8.30pm, Glasgow Comedy Festival.