What's the Loneliest Day Of Your Year?
A little while ago I tweeted about how New Year’s Eve is usually the day of the year that I find most difficult as a single person. Others’ responses to my tweet showed that I’m far from alone.
I’m thankful to the folks over at Living Out who invited me to explain a little more about why NYE can be the loneliest day of the year, and how others can help make it less lonely for those they love.
Read on for an excerpt and a link to the full article.
What day is the loneliest day of your year? For some, it is Christmas Day. For others, it is Mother’s or Father’s Day, or perhaps their birthday. For yet others, it is a date that seems entirely innocuous to the rest of us but is hugely significant for them.
For me, it's none of the above. For me, it’s New Year’s Eve.
It wasn’t always that way. For many years I found December 31st to be exciting. It symbolised movement and progress, optimism and new beginnings. When Christmas was done and dusted for another year, we still had NYE to look forward to. It also didn’t hurt that down here in Australia, the weather is warm, the sun is (typically) shining, and the beaches are crowded. Sure, New York might have a ball that drops in Time Square. London might have a chiming Big Ben. But here in Sydney we have the harbour and its bridge. We have the Opera House and (let’s just all admit it) the very best NYE fireworks show in the world.
What could there possibly be for me to not love about NYE?
I can imagine my younger self asking that very question, with no small degree of incredulity. But what young Dani didn’t realise is that…
As a married gal, I have come to loathe New Year’s Eve. The pressures to attend events I’d prefer to not be at, the sadness of not being included in the ones I actually want to be involved with (which honestly has happened more as a married woman than when I was single, and I married late! I feel the same as you, but as the forgotten married friend), and then the way as a childless woman it brings lots of pain with hopes dashed and lost, and the mindless comments at the events I feel obliged to attend with those who profess to know me but really don’t. I’m now saying no to those events and treating it like another day. It’s easier that way.
This confounds me. Not the loneliness, but the decisions of Churches to close functions that amount to friendly contact, and relationship building, during public and church holidays. Even at boarding school (a long long time ago) our Sunday Chapel services just finished! But there were a 100 or so boarders who wandered off to wait for the lunch bell some hours later. [But that is ancient history.]
But today, here in Australia, in many metropolitan churches and also in many regional and country churches, our Christmas and Easter services finish, . . . ! And whatever follows at other times, the coffee and cake or biscuits, and catch up conversations are silenced.
I am not sure I have one solution, but I write this to say I hear you Dani, and others. In my view those who especially miss out, are not only 'singles', both those who are singles again, living partners of those who have died or whose marriage has failed. For some of us, this broad group of singles make up a large part of our church membership. (Our churches census data, from most data sources, support this evidence.)
Not to condemn the digital communication revolution, at least that part called social media, but it seems we have given up the physical and emotional contact and growth, for the electronic emotional reaction that lasts five seconds. Although the following statement is a bit strong - 'We appear to choose isolation for the purpose of not relating too much to our single sisters and brothers in Christ'.
Perhaps the better action here is to question if our lack of relationship activities on these public holiday events, often a church calendar celebration day, is sending a message; that does not actively support the teaching that we are to be all part of the one body?