Approaches to celebrating Christmas in widowhood Tracy Collins Life course Institute, Keele University

Christmas as method and data As part of current longitudinal research with older widows, the second and third of three interviews focused on the social celebration of Christmas. As a social practice in everyday life, Christmas reveals the minutia of the women’s lived experiences and the detail of their social networks.

Christmas and ritual ¡ Christmas represents one of the most important family rituals; it is portrayed as the ‘ideal’ family occasion, charged with emotion, and epitomized in popular culture by books, films and advertisements. ¡ However, studies have found that transitions can have a negative impact on family rituals.

Christmas and transition ¡ Cartledgehayes (2003) describes how the grief of widowhood is exacerbated over the Christmas period by the pressure to participate in and maintain former rituals. ¡ Pett, Lang and Gander (1992) found later life divorce necessitated change in family ritual at Christmas.

Managing Christmas If Christmas has come to symbolise family, it can also reinforce a lack of family and can therefore be a difficult time for the recently widowed or single. The following accounts demonstrate the different ways that older widows manage these processes, including the continuities and discontinuities therein.

‘a real family Christmas’ ‘I had a lovely time…we did most of our Christmas shopping together and then most of the cooking and things like that…and we er watched all the youngsters opening their stockings…while Cathy my daughter in law was making the sort of breakfast, er Andrew and I took the dogs for a walk and came back…and we sat around the log fire, and we had all our presents from underneath the Christmas tree…we had a super day…it was a real family Christmas’ Megan

‘I was here on my own’ ‘well Christmas wasn’t very good at all, I was here…I was here on my own Christmas day…for me dinner a banana, for me tea a tin of vegetable soup…so I was on my own…I was glad when they’d both gone…Christmas and New Year, you know, so I just had the television on, to pass the time away, you know’ Mary

‘I went away for Christmas’ ‘oh it was lovely, I haven't been away, erm, I’ve been away many, many times with my hubby, er but er, I went to me daughter’s the first Christmas I was on my own…so I said to my friend I could do with going away…and I’m ever so pleased that I did…it was really, really good…but it is a really bad time, you know Christmas…I mean I’ve always had me family, but I thought I’ll have to do something, so then we decided to go away’ Flora

‘I don’t like just sitting there’ ‘when you are used to having a family…and you are preparing all the meals, and you are doing all the buying in, and you cook and are planning everything…erm, you are like the centre and that, and then when you go out, you just have to sit there and watch everybody else…and I don’t like just sitting there…I mean I never thought, I sometimes think to myself…well you should have understood how your mother, how my mother must have felt…she said ‘I sit in a corner and everybody talks over me…you know, they don’t talk to me, they talk over me’, and I felt exactly the same’ Deirdre

‘well he’d have to come wouldn’t he’ ‘two days before Christmas my nephew, who I haven't seen for six months, visited me, that was a miracle, and he came and he brought his wife along, who I haven't seen for eighteen months, and…that was nice…and yet its got a sting attached to it, because he’s my only flesh and blood apart from my sister…and he’s very neglectful, and erm…being Christmas, well he’d have to come wouldn’t he…they never invited me for Christmas, and so I thought to myself well I’m going to…have to spend Christmas on my own then, and then I thought well you are not Veronica, because you can invite people, I invited two friends, who live just at the back here and go to church’ Veronica

Summary Christmas is a useful means of gaining an understanding of the women’s diverse experiences and their social relationships during a period of transition. The women’s narratives illustrate the complexities involved in continuing family ritual as an older widow.

References Cartledgehayes, M Blue Christmas. Christian Century, Vol. 120, Issue 26, p8, 2p. Pett, M., Lang, N., and Gander, A Late-Life Divorce. Journal of Family Issues, Vol. 13, No. 4, p , (27p.), Dec.