The First Christmas Without Them — What Nobody Tells You

The first Christmas is the one you can see coming from a long way off.

The anniversary of a death belongs to you. Christmas belongs to everybody. It starts in the shops in October and it does not stop — the music, the adverts, the tree in the corner of every room you walk into. You do not get to decide when you think about it.

The build-up is longer than the day

Families who have been through it say the same thing they say about the first anniversary: the run-up was worse.

With Christmas the run-up is eight weeks long. It begins the first time a song catches you in a supermarket aisle in early November and it builds through every card that arrives addressed to both of you, every invitation, every colleague asking what your plans are.

By the time December 25th actually arrives, many people find it is quieter than the dread that preceded it. There is a strange relief in a day finally matching how you have felt for a month.

If you are reading this in November and wondering why you are already struggling: this is why. You are not failing at Christmas early. You are in the part that nobody describes.

The decisions are the hard part, not the day

Do you put the tree up. Do you hang their stocking. Do you lay a place at the table. Do you send cards signed with one name instead of two.

Every one of these is a small question with an enormous weight behind it, and the cruelty is that they all land in the same fortnight.

Here is what helps: decide them early, and decide them out loud. Not on Christmas Eve, when you are tired and the shops are shut and whatever you choose will feel like it means something permanent. Decide in November, with other people in the room, when you can still change your mind.

And know that whatever you choose this year is not a precedent. Families who skipped the tree entirely in year one put it up in year two. Families who went all out in year one cancelled everything in year three. Neither direction is a betrayal.

Nobody will say their name, and you will notice

This is the one that catches people off guard at the table.

The room is full. The food is good. And nobody mentions the person who is missing, because every single one of them is afraid of being the one who ruins Christmas.

Meanwhile you are sitting there thinking of nothing else, and the silence starts to feel like they have been edited out.

The fix is the same unfair fix as the anniversary: you have to go first. A toast before the meal. One sentence — I want to say his name before we start. Almost everyone at that table will be relieved. Most of them were holding it in too.

Give them somewhere to be

The families who get through the first Christmas best tend to have one thing in common. They give the person a place in the day rather than trying to route around them.

That might be a visit to the grave on Christmas morning before anything else starts. It might be their ornament on the tree, or their stocking hung with everyone else's and left empty on purpose, or a candle lit at the table. It might be cooking the thing only they liked.

One fixed point is enough. The rest of the day can be as ordinary or as cancelled as you need it to be. Our guide to what to bring to a graveside visit covers the practical side if the cemetery is part of your plan.

If you are taking something with you, it needs to survive December. Our Christmas memorial balloons are heart-shaped with angel wings and a snowman, sold as a 2-pack — the 8" balloons on a stick need no helium at all and push straight into the ground, so they stand beside the headstone in the cold without anyone holding them.

If there are children

The instinct is to make Christmas perfect so they do not feel the gap. It rarely works, and it is exhausting to attempt.

Children generally cope better when the absence is named simply and then the day carries on. Grandad loved this bit. He would have eaten all of those. Said lightly, in passing, more than once. It gives them permission to miss him without being told that Christmas is now a sad thing forever.

Letting a child choose what to take to the grave, or put their name on it, gives them a job on a day when they can feel very powerless.

The days after are their own thing

Almost nobody warns you about the 27th.

The guests have gone. The structure has gone. The thing you braced for is behind you and the next three days are flat and quiet and strangely worse. Then New Year arrives with its insistence that you look forward, in the year that will become the first full year without them.

Plan one small thing for that week. Not an event — a walk, a visit, a friend. It is a gap that catches people every single year.

Questions families ask

Should we still celebrate Christmas?

If anyone in the house wants to, yes, and it does not dishonour anybody. Grief and a good day are allowed to share a room. Scaling down is also completely reasonable — a smaller Christmas is not a cancelled one.

Do we hang their stocking?

Many families do, and leave it empty, or fill it with notes written to them through the year. Others find it unbearable. There is no correct answer, only the one your household can stand this year.

Is it wrong to feel relieved when it is over?

No. Relief is the most commonly reported feeling on December 26th in a first year, and it is not a measure of how much you loved them.

What if I cannot face the cemetery on Christmas Day?

Then go on a day you can, or do something at home instead. The date is not the point. Families who find the trip too much often mark it with a virtual balloon release from the house.

Before next year comes round

The first Christmas is one of several firsts, and they keep arriving — the birthday, the anniversary, the first Mother's or Father's Day. The first death anniversary has its own shape, and knowing it in advance helps.

You do not have to carry all those dates in your head. Give us their dates in the form on this page and we will remind you — free, about two weeks beforehand, every year, so there is still time to plan instead of time to regret. You can add up to five people.