CHRISTMAS PUD AND BIRTHDAY CAKE

There’s always the strategy of ensuring a little bit of Christmas Day is dedicated to you. Indeed, Mr Wilson became Christmas host himself, inviting around friends who, because they were far away from loved ones, weren’t able to be with their families on the day.
“I’d have an orphan’s Christmas for people who had nowhere else to go and we’d have a champagne to mark my birthday and then Christmas lunch sometimes with both a birthday cake and Christmas pudding.”
Ms Sokol, said that when she was younger she would often end Christmas Day surrounded by friends marking her birthday. “As we’d all spent the day doing our duty with our families and it was a good excuse for everyone to come over and celebrate.
“But as I’ve got older, I think we don’t really want to leave our families on Christmas Day anymore. So we’ll have dinner and then it will be my birthday celebrations and we’ll have a cake and a pinata.”
What about presents, do those born on Christmas Day get two? Generally yes, it seems.
“Presents wise I’ve never had issues,” says Chris Young from Orange in western NSW. “If anything my rellies find it more convenient to be able to shop for my birthday and Christmas in one go. I get the same amount of presents as anyone else, a birthday present and a Christmas present, but they just come on consecutive days.”
But well wishers can still slip up.
“My pet hate is when people give you a present in Christmas paper and go ‘Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday,’” says Ms Holgate. “It’s a bit poor form, I wouldn’t wrap their birthday presents in the Christmas wrap I found at the back of the cupboard.”

BIRTHDAY NUMBER TWO

Creating an alternative birthday day is a common solution. “I try to celebrate with friends maybe a week before and my mum used to give me the presents early so it would make it special,” said Mr Wilson.
Ms Sokol said that one year she organised a birthday six months early, “But that fizzed out after one year because it feels very strange getting a present in July.”
She hasn’t been tempted to do it again, “I would feel a bit embarrassed because the moment’s gone. I think it would be a bit self-indulgent.”
Even closer to the actual day is a struggle, she says. “ At Christmas no one wants to spend extra money so I’ve actually stopped doing things with friends because it’s just too hard basket.”

CHRISTMAS BABIES RARE

Christmas babies are relatively rare. According the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, August is the most popular month Americans give birth. Conversely, public holidays, such as Christmas Day, are some of the least popular days for babies to enter to world.
Nevertheless some famous names have their birthday on 25 December — there’s seminal scientist Sir Isaac Newtown, actor Humphrey Bogart and singer Annie Lennox. And what about Ariadna Gutiérrez, better known as Miss Colombia, who just last week had the annual heartbreak of losing her birthday to Christmas compounded by winning, and then instantly losing, Miss Universe?
“I think it stinks,” said Mr Wilson, “It’s not celebrated at all and most people, even good friends, forget it’s your birthday.”
 “I’ve definitely had less birthday celebrations because people are too focused on Christmas. They’re too busy and it’s a low priority for them.”
Tennille Holgate, an advertising account manager, was the first baby born in Wollongong in her year of birth. She even made it onto the front page of the local papers.
Yet, subsequent Christmas Days would come and go with barely a mention of its special relevance to her. “My birthday was never celebrated on my actual birthday. Instead my mum would try hard to do a another party in November so all my friends could attend. I knew it was a bit unusual.”
Ms Holgate still needs to be reminded the day is partly about her. “Now we do the whole Christmas thing and it comes to midmorning, when all the presents are over, and someone goes ‘oh, happy birthday’ and I’m like ‘oh yer, happy birthday to me.’”

How to survive Christmas when it’s also your birthday

WHO doesn’t love Christmas Day? There’s loads of free gifts, you are legally required to overindulge, and you have a free pass to fall asleep in front of the television.
But for a small group of people Christmas Day is a constant disappointment, never living up to its promise.
“I’m all a bit bah humbug,” says David Wilson, a post office manager from Cobargo in southern NSW.
“It’s just too hard basket,” says Bern Sokol, a radio producer from Sydney.
But these aren’t Christmas grinches who turn their noses up at good times with family and friends. Many love a mince pie and a glass of bubbly inappropriately early in the day.
No, these are the people who had this misfortune to their birthday on Christmas Day and have always played second fiddle to the little baby Jesus.

Why millennials are shunning their families to spend Christmas with friends

Parents with grown children will lead out with the presumptive “when you’re home at Christmas” rather than if, wistfully picturing all their progeny decorating a tree or gathered round the piano singing carols like they do in It’s A Wonderful Life.
Next it’s the guilt-tripping and blackmailing “please come, granny might only have a few Christmases left you know,” and “don’t forget who’s paying for your useless film degree”.
The truth is that many 20-somethings prefer to eschew the big traditional Christmas with their families, either because they don’t like them very much or because they can’t be bothered with an interstate trip home, and would rather spend the day with friends.
This Christmas, Melbourne cinema manager and Coffs Harbour escapee Harry Thompson plans to be living it up in his Fitzroy share-house by taking a long bath.
“Christmas exacerbates loneliness,” says Harry, “it makes people feel like outsiders, like they’re desperately alone. There’s all this pressure and it brings out the worst in people. The whole holiday is deplorable; everyone buys too many gifts and too much food. You can just picture this nice white family with a thousand presents stacked as far as the eye can see and nobody is actually happy. As soon as it finishes all the supermarkets are just full of all this rotting meat, all those animals that died for nothing.”
 “Really it’s not that I hate my family,” said Harry, “I just can’t afford to go home right now.”
Often preferring his own company at this time year, Harry told us “I hate Christmas so much that one time I packed my bag with a bottle of vodka and an avocado and went for a solitary eight hour bike ride.
“Then me and my mates drank martinis and danced to Beyonce in the loungeroom all night long. Hospo workers aren’t allowed proper time off work at Christmas, so we all band together and get wasted.”
When you move halfway across the world you can build a new family based on values instead of blood. If it happens you share a fondness for awesome tats, sunnies and vintage sportswear all the better.
Brit émigré Linzi Moroney, a hairdresser at Toni & Guy in Melbourne, won’t be making the trip back to ol’ Blighty this Christmas, preferring to stay in the sun and the spotlight.
“We’re getting a big group together on Christmas Day,” says Linzi, “we’ll all have dinner together and do a Secret Santa. Then we’ll drink lots of rum and hit the beach!”

Moroney.Source:Supplied

Meanwhile Linzi’s fiance Danny Greet, bass player of band Trouserforce will be rocking out with his new musical family, rehearsing for a post-Xmas show at Whole Lotta Love on December 28th.
And fear not carol singers, there is still some fleeting Christmas spirit in among the young and hip. Jetsetting ad exec Anna Martinen may spend Christmas in a different place each year, but always brings plenty of tinsel and cheer.
“I have many families,” says Anna, “last year I was with my adopted family, my best friend and her parents have basically adopted me. This year I’m staying with close friends, and your friends can be your family too. We’re going to combine Estonian Christmas traditions and have a two-day feast.”
Sometimes at Christmas one good friend is all you need, even for that negative-nancy Harry. “My best Christmas,” he says fondly, “I went out to a country house to stay with a friend, because she has this big conservatory with glass on every side. We ate a whole wheel of cheese and watched the BBC series of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. After a couple of days of that we’d forgotten all about Christmas and had started talking like Jane Austen.

Why Christmas really is the season for separation

WHILE most of us use the Christmas period to celebrate and surround ourselves with loved ones, the silly season is also the biggest time for marriages to go in to meltdown.
In today’s Marriage and Divorce statistics released by the ABS, the number of divorces have decreased by 1,140 in 2014, with a total of 46,498 applications granted in Australia. But, the amount of joint applications for divorce has continued to rise, with 19,281 divorces granted from joint applications.
Despite the overall divorce rates being lower than last year, the Australian Institute of Family Studies indicated that the figure among couples over the age of 50 was going up. This may be due to people getting married at a later age than in previous years, with men tying the knot at 31.5 years, and women walking down the aisle at 29.6.
So why are we seeing a trend of ‘silver splitters’ just in time for Christmas?
Slater & Gordon Divorce and Family lawyer, Heather McKinnon, said the silly season was the busiest time of year in terms of dealing with divorce, and agreed the ‘silver splitters’ were becoming more and more common.
“Silver wedding anniversary couples or empty nesters fall in to that more common bubble, because many people stick in their relationship until their children reach adulthood,” Mrs McKinnon told news.com.au
“Usually we see a number of people use their child’s exam period to get preliminary advice on applying for a divorce, and then once that time of the school year is over, the marriage will file for divorce in January or February.”
“The Christmas and holiday period is the most stressful time for families. It’s the time of year when you’re stuck together. During other times of the year, couples can ignore the dysfunction, because kids are at school and at least one of the parents are at work,” she said.
For 23-year-old Sally and her younger brother Andy, their parents tried everything to stay together until they were both out of school before filing for divorce.
“My brother was halfway through his HSC and I was a year out of school,” Sally told news.com.au
“My dad would always tell us that the only reason he was still with mum was because we were both still living at home and because it would make school stressful [for Andy].
“He would always say that as soon as we finished school, he’d be outta there.”
But for Sally, the tension and hostility within the household was evident.
“We definitely knew there was something wrong even before they separated,” she said.
“I wish they had separated years earlier, because it was so much harder having to deal with the constant arguing and nastiness about each other.
“I think by the time they did separate, my brother and I were relieved, but then the year following the separation was one of the toughest years of my life.
“It was super tough for my brother though, it really did effect his HSC but it was more the way that they went about the whole thing. I think there was so much built up hate that when my dad did decide to leave it just all blew up.
“They definitely handled the worst way and took it all out on us”.
Common in China, it was revealed in an annual ‘divorce peak’ study that marriages were breaking down in June — September, which are the months immediately following China’s National College Entrance exam, known as the Gaokao.
In an interview with the China Daily, marriage lawyer Zhou Hao said since the end of the 2015 Gaokao, Zhou had received about 30 requests for divorce assistance, with more than 20 involving mothers whose children took part in this year’s college entrance exam.
Clinical Psychologist Elisabeth Shaw told the Australian Financial Review many couples waited until their late 40s and 50s because that’s when their children usually finished school, and they were more grown up and able to deal with the change.
“Commonly that’s when the children are in their mid-teens or outside of school, so people feel freer to make those decisions.”
Couples therapist and psychologist Dr Debra Campbell acknowledged the latter part of the year often called for more stressful situations, because holiday periods resulted in troubled couples spending more time together, without much room to escape.
“We see who our partners really are, and that reality hits hard, especially if the relationship isn’t going well,” Dr Campbell told news.com.au
“It’s common to hear ‘I’ve been waiting until school or exams to end’ to end the marriage. It’s a reality for many parents that they’re hanging in there in a pretty unhappy relationship for their sons and daughters to finish their education or another year of their education, to keep the home, finances and routines stable for the kids for as long as possible.
“As soon as the focus of the kids is removed, they have to face reality of life together, and that’s a big time of revaluation.
Many parents try and ‘stick out’ their marriage until their kids are older and able to deal with the change. But according to Dr Campbell, this mindset isn’t necessarily beneficial to the child.
“Kids can tell, it provides a model to them and it might not be a model that’s helpful to them,” she said.
In 2014, divorces involving children represented 47 per cent of all applications granted compared with 47.4 per cent in 2013.

‘Everything went white, I thought I was dead’: Why Isabella stayed in a violent marriage, and why she left

ISABELLA had been out with friends for dinner when her husband greeted her at the back door by knocking her out.
She came to on the bed with him slapping her to wake her up, cradling their son Ethan* in his arms. “I was holding my head, there was blood on the doona, I felt so dizzy,” she said. “I was worried about Ethan not having a mother.
“I said, ‘I need help’. He said, ‘Get over it’. The next thing you know, he punched me in the right eye. Everything went white. I thought I was dead.
“He said, ‘I know I’m going to get done for this, so I’m going to finish you off in the pool.’”
It was far from the first time Ben had hit Isabella. He had kicked her to the ground in public, threatened to rape her and tried to knee her in the stomach when she was pregnant. But this was the time she decided to leave.
Some question why victims of domestic violence stay with their abusers, even blaming them for their own suffering. Isabella wants people to understand how hard it can be to break free, and what finally gave her the strength to do it — her son.
The physical and verbal abuse started when the couple met in September 2012, says the 43-year-old. She had already been in a relationship “with a bit of violence” so “it didn’t really faze me, I didn’t think it was a big deal,” she told news.com.au.
Daughter of a Polish immigrant mother and abusive, alcoholic father who left when she was two, Isabella had just been made redundant from her job in microbiology and was working in a factory. Ben was single-minded in his pursuit of her.
“The relationship was quite fast, I thought he was great,” said Isabella, from Newcastle, NSW, who appears in the first episode of domestic violence series Hitting Home tonight on ABC. “We would go out every weekend, but I found he was quite a jealous person. He wanted to know where I was going, who I was talking to on the phone. I was flattered.”
Three months into their relationship, the couple moved in together. The abuse was subtle at first, easy to shrug off. Ben’s mother pointed out that he was controlling what his partner wore, telling her to dress in shorts instead of the skirts she usually favoured. Another time, he poured beer over Isabella at a festival because he thought she was looking at other men.
“He would take my phone and keys. He was controlling who I was seeing and what I was eating because he was obsessed with appearance, and me being fat.”
As Ben became increasingly physical, Isabella began keeping a calendar of what he did to her. She reads an entry from March 17 2013: The couple were walking home when Isabella mentioned an ex-boyfriend. Ben kicked her in the leg and dragged her to the ground as he tried to pull her phone from her. They were near a community hall and several people who were at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting came out to help. They warned her to leave, but Ben swore he would change. Isabella wanted to believe him.
The episodes became more terrifying. On one occasion, Ben barricaded her in the bedroom, running outside naked to drag her back in when she tried to get away. “I was scared and powerless,” she says. “He wouldn’t let me sleep. He would put the lights on, splash water on me and say ‘listen to me!’ He would sit on my chest, hold down my arms with his knees and spit on me. If I refused sex, he’d say, ‘I’m going to rape you.’ The next day he’d say, ‘I was only joking.’”
One night he punched Isabella so hard he broke her rib. The doctor was suspicious, but she brushed off his concerns. In May 2013, she found out she was pregnant.
“The physical abuse stopped but the emotional abuse continued,” she said. “I went out for lunch with a girlfriend and he chased me round the bed, so I dialled her number so she could hear. He tried to knee me in the stomach when I was in the shower at one point.
“I was very depressed. I was thinking about aborting, but it was way too late.”
In August 2013, they got married. Just before the wedding, the scared wife-to-be texted his mother to see if she was doing the right thing. “Am I the only one?” she asked. Ben’s mother said yes. “It made me feel terrible,” said Isabella. “I was thinking it was all my fault.”
Later, when she found out about the other women he had abused, she asked her mother-in-law why she had lied. It was because Ben left her alone when he was with Isabella.
 “He was very manipulative. If someone was around, he wouldn’t hurt me and if I threatened him with court, he’d say, ‘They’ll see you as an idiot.’ My self-esteem and confidence were at a low.
“I was embarrassed that I’d got into a relationship like this, and I wanted to make it work.
“He said he would change after the pregnancy and spend time with his son. He didn’t.”
Isabella went to the police several times. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” she said. “But I didn’t end up going to court, so it got thrown out. I didn’t have confidence they’d believe me.”
The couple moved for a fresh start. During viewings of their old home, Ben was at the pub and Isabella begged him to come home to help as she juggled her newborn and the viewers. Her husband told her to “stop acting like a c**t”. He took her over the park, grabbed her hand and threw her to the ground.
“There were parents everywhere watching soccer and no one came to help. Ethan* was in the pram screaming. [Ben] ripped my bra off. It was humiliating, I shook uncontrollably.”
The new house spelled the beginning of the end: it wasn’t on a busy road and didn’t have soundproofing like the last. When neighbours heard Isabella screaming and her son crying, they called the police, but even when Ben was arrested, he came back saying he had been let off with a slap on the wrist.
When Isabella mentioned their lack of money, his drinking and his endless sick days, he would get angry, once grabbing her head and pushing it through the wall. “I was worried people would see it but it didn’t faze me much, I was used to it by then,” she said.
 “I hoped things would get better, I was always trying to figure out what made him happy. I believed the promises he made, I tried to believe because I did love him. I became desensitised to the abuse, I didn’t think it was that bad, but with counselling I can understand. I was embarrassed and ashamed of myself, people would think I was an idiot for staying.”
It was the final attack that made her realise she had to leave, for her son’s sake if not her own. Her sister told Isabella she didn’t want her next visit to Newcastle to be for her younger sibling’s funeral.
Ben was convicted of assault and multiple counts of contravening his AVO (apprehended violence order) as he repeatedly tried to get to his wife and son. He was sentenced to 40 months in jail, and is due for release in September 2017.
Isabella now has security cameras installed at her house from a government organisation called Staying Home, Leaving Violence to record if her husband comes back. She refuses to take her son to see Ben in prison. “I know the last vision he saw of his father was when he raised his fist at me and grabbed my hair. He’s seen it all and he’s not even two, but I know he knows what’s going on. Seeing that terror in his eyes ...
“When Ben was arrested, it took a long time for Ethan to let go of me, he was so clingy. He’s so confident and happy now, he’s a different person. When I’m tired he comes up to me and says ‘Mummy, I love you.’”

Desperate man writes hilarious letter to paper after wife goes to hospital

THERE’S nothing more infuriating than not being able to find a clean tea towel.
But this man took his predicament to extremes when he hilariously wrote to a national newspaper complaining he couldn’t find his.
Brian Noble, from Ferntree Gully in Victoria, panicked after his partner of 40 years went to hospital “to have her feet done”, and ended up writing a desperate letter to The Age asking for help.
The brilliant letter was spotted on Twitter and has now been shared hundreds of times.
It starts, “This letter is more of a confession than anything.
“My partner of 40 years unselfishly decided to get her feet done and she’s been in hospital for the past three days.
“She’s doing really well but I still don’t know where the tea towels are.
“God knows, I’ve looked for the tea towels all over the place but I just can’t find them.”
Twitter users responded with hilarity and disdain — and the man’s quest has now gone viral.

China’s vanishing mail-order brides: The imported wives who won’t stick around

CHINA’S singles have it tough, battling a deep wealth divide and gender imbalance that makes it harder than ever to find true love.
With desperate young men advertising themselves on billboards and hiring professional matchmakers to find the right person, one tactic has proved unsurprisingly popular: mail-order brides.
But the dream weddings have turned into nightmares, with beautiful overseas spouses disappearing in hordes.
Vietnamese brides have been pouring into rural villages with a surplus of men over the past decade, and bachelors will pay as much as $25,000 to secure a match. Last November, the unthinkable happened: up to 100 wives from Hebei province vanished all at once.
With them went the matchmaker who had collected the cash, and provided a money-back guarantee. Bloomberg called it a “peculiarly Chinese instance of fraud”.
A year on, the jilted husbands are shaking their heads in confusion and despair. Li Guichen, a forty-something from the deprived village of Feixiang, cannot remember what his wife was called. She was gone after six days.
“I’m not sure what her name was, I didn’t even get to know her before she left,” he told the Financial Times. He didn’t seem to know much about her at all. “She was like a normal woman,” he offered, explaining that he had married her because she was more affordable than a local girl.
Chinese women now typically work in cities and enjoy a comfortable lifestyle with daily baths and all the amenities of urban areas — something men who live in rural areas simply can’t offer. These young women are unlikely to leave urban areas for a lower quality of life, even if that means staying single.
Li Yongshuai, also from Feixiang, kept the hair tie and cosmetics his wife Afang left behind, in what seems like the romantic gesture of a rejected lover. He keeps a photo of her, after scraping off the nail varnish she painted over her face before she left.
But he can’t give her last name, saying he never saw an ID card or passport.
His father Xinjiang is even more clueless about Afang’s identity. “We called her ‘Hey, come eat,’” he said.
Li met Afang at matchmaker Wu Meiyu’s beauty salon. Wu had reportedly arrived 20 years earlier from Vietnam as a mail-order bride, and specialised in finding affordable women for men, who could meet them at her “palace of romance”.
The wives came with no papers and often no Chinese.
Afang did not take well to life with Li’s family in rural China. She was expected to reproduce, and in return, was looked after. The first words she learnt were, “Mama, Papa, I’m out of money,” according to her ex-husband.
She made the family buy rice, which no one in northern China eats. She argued with Li, and he claims she appeared “happy” when he hurt his leg because she “thought she would get away for a few days.”
Many brides report not being allowed to visit their families in Vietnam, because their Chinese in-laws believe they would never come back.
After Afang vanished, the family found a Vietnamese-Chinese phrase book that gave some clues to what she was thinking. She had written out on a blank page: “That’s because you don’t allow me to go out”, “You smell!” and “You need a bath.”
Still, these Chinese husbands were determined to make their relationships work. But it was about to fall apart. Wu began going for long journeys with groups of girls, saying she was collecting ID cards to register them. She had promised that if they left their husbands before five years, the men would get new brides for free.
On November 21, 2014, the Vietnamese wives of Feixiang village said they were going to a party and disappeared en masse.
The grooms began calling each other trying to find the missing women, but their phones had gone dead. Some had left children behind, some had been with their husbands for years. The men had been victims of a massive con.
Police launched a special taskforce to investigate 28 reports of bride fraud in Hebei province (locals say the number was closer to 100, but many husbands didn’t want to make statements). In December 2014, detectives said they had made three arrests, although none was Wu. The case is said to be ongoing.
It isn’t unique. In March, police in Suiyuan discovered a Vietnamese bride fraud gang and arrested 11 people. In 2013, eight Vietnamese brides disappeared in Shandong province, and in 2012, eight vanished in Jiangxi.
This is unlikely to be the end of this kind of unhappiness and heartache. Men are expected to outnumber women by more than 33 million in China over the next five years, according to the country’s National Bureau of Statistics. These surplus bachelors are known as guanggun, or “bare branches”. Women who fail to marry before 30, meanwhile, are known as “leftover women”.
In rural China, where sons were so important for farming while the one-child policy was in effect, the problem is now especially pronounced. The booming country has gone from exporting Chinese brides to Taiwan and Japan to importing them from poorer Asian nations.

MAKE ROOM FOR THE GRAIN OF SADNESS THAT WILL ALWAYS BE THERE

When I finally stopped running from the pain of my separated Christmas, things began to look up. My new partner, my daughter and I sat around and read the owl and mole Christmas story, opened our stockings and miraculously liked our gifts. We ate too many cookies and went for a walk. At some point in the day, we each had a small cry about what and who we missed, and we comforted each other. And in the evening some of the people we loved came over, and we played music, ate Pavlova and pudding and sat in the garden. There were twinkly lights and some singing, and no one pretended our family was perfect. All in all it was a good day.
Spending your newly fractured Christmas trying not to be sad, wishing it would all just go away or struggling to make things feel normal is like holding your breath and hoping to stay alive. It just won’t work. You can’t escape the pain of breaking up or the work of rebuilding your life, you just have to endure it. That’s the truth about loss.
You don’t get over it; you just have to set a place for it at the table. And even when you’ve got enough courage to build something new, you don’t ever get back what you lost. But what you do get is another opportunity to make your own life. Don’t let it pass you by.

DON’T BE AFRAID TO BUILD SOMETHING NEW

Christmas may currently be lying in pieces on the floor, but try to see it like a real estate agent sees a broken down house — as a renovation opportunity. Whether you’re spending the day with the cat, with your kids and no money, in a refuge, or on your aunty’s couch, don’t miss whatever tiny opportunity still exists to build something new that’s meaningful for you.
I wish I hadn’t spent a miserable Christmas Day in a park scaring a small child. I wish I’d been courageous enough to go on a road trip with a box of cookies and a mixed CD, Skype in to my sister’s do or babysit some dogs for the season. When you’re too afraid to build a new thing, then all you’re left with is the mess the old thing left behind.

SIFT THROUGH THE WRECKAGE AND SALVAGE THE THINGS YOU LOVE MOST

In every ritual there are the things that really ring your chimes and the things you can live without. There’s lots of holiday nonsense I don’t miss for a second, like my ex father-in-law’s trifle, but some of the trimmings are totally essential. The hazelnut crescent cookies my grandmother used to make, a Christmas story about an owl and some moles who want a telescope from Santa to see the stars, and present-stuffed stockings are absolutely inseparable from Christmas for me.
Whatever form the day is taking for you this year, make sure to hang on to the crucial parts of the ritual that make you feel like the celebration is actually yours. Don’t worry about the rest of the festive crap, it’s not worth it. Some of it you might even be glad to leave behind.

LET GOT OF WHAT’S GONE

This is the hardest part. If you can take care of this tricky bit of business, you’ll hold the key to making your peace with the silly season. Try to face up to the stuff that will never happen again.
Some people can all sit down and celebrate after the bank accounts have been split, but maybe that’s not your ex, and maybe it never will be. So do yourself a favour and try not to argue with the breakup gods and accept that your family as you once knew it and many of the holiday things you shared, are never to be again.
Trying to play the hand you think you should have been dealt rather than the cards you’re actually holding will only guarantee years of miserable Christmas times. This is life. Bad things happen, things break and feel ruined and then you pick up the tiny unbroken things and let the rest go. Then you rebuild. If you can’t accept what’s gone, you can’t build a new life. It’s that simple.

How to survive Christmas after separation

Whether you’re a gentle lover of tinsel or a full-blown Christmas tragic, the first Yuletide in Splitsville is about as much fun as a tequila hangover. If you’re lucky, you’ll get through it without actually dropping your head in the toilet.
And like a hangover, there really is no escaping the pain. Over the years I’ve watched many people try and fail to dodge the hurt of a newly broken Christmas, and when my turn finally came along, I made my own foolish attempts to escape the ghosts of Christmases past.
I tried the runaway Christmas, flying off to my family overseas and the snowy weather and twinkly lights, only to find that of course someone was still missing, and so we were still sad. I tried the pretend-it’s-not-happening Christmas, and spent a miserable day working tragically hard to imagine that Christmas wasn’t all around, and ended up in tears in a park scaring a small child who was wearing reindeer antlers.
It took me a while to get with the new holiday program.
So in the hope of saving you years of festive misery, I’ve compiled a small list of ideas to help navigate the silly season without unnecessary suffering. Because if you can face the holidays head on, you’ve got a chance of making something lovely out of the wreckage of your former Christmas life.

Avoid disasters at your family Christmas with Ethics Centre helpline

With one in three Australian marriages ending in divorce, more of us are tiptoeing our way around the at times thorny landscape of blended families — how should you share your time between your mum and dad? Do you split the day or do you alternate each year? What if one parent would spend the day alone if not for you? What if your partner’s family lives in a different city?
And then there can be other dilemmas chucked into the mix, like having a relative who is unwell or who has passed away. Or you might simply have a pesky aunt you just can’t face seeing.
Well, there is actually a bona fide helpline to help minimise your pain in dealing with such nagging issues.
For the folks at the Ethics Centre, no problem is too small — as long as your conundrum has a moral element to it.
The organisation’s trained volunteers at the Ethi-call service help Australians navigate the ethical dimensions of their personal situation — not by giving advice or spelling out what the ethical choice is, but simply by helping them explore scenarios and what decision may be best according to their own values.
The underlying aim is to alleviate the distress caused by the dilemmas of day-to-day living.
Ethics Centre senior consultant Elisabeth Shaw, who runs Ethi-call, said family issues may seem minor to outsiders, but they can feel deeply disturbing to the person in the thick of it, especially if they feel they are violating their life values.
“They experience great internal conflict. Usually when there’s an ethical dilemma, emotions run very hot,” Ms Shaw said.
“We get extraordinarily complex calls you simply could not have invented yourself.”
She said people rang when a problem felt very private and they couldn’t or didn’t want to look to their usual support networks.
Ms Shaw, who says she has gained special insight into the changing Australian psyche, warned that the holiday season was becoming more stressful as blended families became more commonplace.
“We have more families of different forms, so we’re seeing issues around what family means and how we consider who is part of our ‘tribe’,” she said.
As a result, calls received at this time of the year often revolve around who gets a seat at the dinner table on December 25.
This decision-making process involves juggling between the caller’s sense of kindness, self-interest and their personal preferences, as well as exploring their duties to themselves versus others.
Ms Shaw said in one recent call, a couple who were both in their second marriage with children from previous spouses were again about to plough through a tough Christmas, but this time exacerbated by the fact the adult son of caller, Jo, was newly single, unemployed and homeless.
Jo’s husband did not want her to again let him come running to her and stay through the holiday season. She rang to thrash out her responsibilities as a mother and a wife, Ms Shaw said.
In another case, a group of adult siblings grieving the recent death of their mother felt the right thing to do was to cancel their Christmas celebrations. One sister, Sally, rang Ethi-call detailing how she did not believe the season should be spent mourning, but felt judged for standing apart.
 “Sally, who had been single for many years, was dating a new person and felt she had a lot to look forward to and to celebrate. She believed her mother would want this, and that she should be allowed to enjoy herself at this time. Family Christmas had been a big tradition,” Ms Shaw said.
And for a few, their Christmas quandaries spread further than their families.
“We recently had a call from someone questioning how she can go about the indulgence of Christmas when Syrian refugees are arriving with nothing but the clothes on their back,” Ms Shaw said.
Stepfamilies Australia chief executive Karen Field is likewise very aware that tens-of-thousands of Australians are currently filled with dread contemplating the social minefield of the festive season.
For many of the one-in-five Aussies who are members of a stepfamily, Ms Field said Christmas could be an emotional battle with their past, their identity and their future.
“Blended doesn’t always mean mended, and emotions can be particularly raw at this time of year — especially when dealing with new and old parents and partners and siblings, not to mention different cultures, religions and traditions,” Ms Field said.
She urged people to remember to compromise, to value quality time over money, to allow for new traditions and for long distance families to seize the benefits of technology.