Countdown to Christmas Calendar Day 20

20 December 2025 – 5 days to Christmas!

Theme: Making Friends and Maintaining Friendships

Today’s Story: An Alternative Christmas Letter

Donna sat at the wooden table in her rented ski cabin, laptop open, staring at a blank document titled “Christmas Letter 2025.” Outside, snow fell steadily on the Pyrenées mountains, muffling the world in white silence. Inside, the woodstove crackled, filling the small space with the scent of well-seasoned burning oak and that particular loneliness of being on your own in a place designed for groups.

She’d rented the cabin on impulse after her sister’s Thanksgiving phone call: “Do something creative for a change. Send out a Christmas letter, review your year.”

The Christmas letter. That annual exercise in competitive life documentation that everyone pretended was about “staying in touch” but was really about proving you were winning at life.

Donna had seventeen years’ worth of these letters saved in a folder somewhere. Each one a carefully curated highlight reel: promotions, vacations, home renovations, children’s achievements (not hers—she’d borrowed other people’s for vicarious bragging purposes). Each one a masterpiece of strategic omission.

This year, she had nothing to omit because there was nothing to brag about.

She opened a bottle of wine—a decent Madiran she’d bought in the village, because if you’re having a crisis in France, you might as well drink good wine—and started typing.

Dear Friends, Family, and People I Haven’t Spoken to Since College,

Welcome to Donna’s 2025 Christmas letter, which I’m writing from a ski cabin in the Pyrenees mountains because when my therapist said “get away for a while,” I took it literally.

This year has been…

She paused. Took a sip of the “powerful red wine, full-bodied and endowed with a strong personality.” Started again.

This year has been an annus horribilis in ways I didn’t even know were possible.

Let’s start with January, when my company announced “exciting changes” which turned out to be code for “we’re eliminating your entire department.” I spent three months convinced I’d done something wrong before realising that it wasn’t personal.

In March, my mother moved into assisted living. The same week, I had to put down my dog of fourteen years. I held Cooper while the vet administered the injection. I’ve never felt more alone in my entire life. The vet cried with me, which was kind, which suggested she’d had a rough day too, and we were all just doing the best we could with what we have.

April: discovered my partner of six years was having an affair with someone who, and I quote from his mansplanation, “understands his creative vision better.” He’s an accountant. His creative vision involves colour-coded spreadsheets. I helped him pack and only broke one thing (a mug that said “World’s Best Boyfriend”—seemed appropriate).

May through August blur together into a grey period of eating cereal for dinner and watching true crime documentaries while my mother called weekly to ask if I’d “met anyone nice” yet, conveniently having forgotten about the accountant situationship.

September: Attempted to “get back out there” via dating apps. Met five different men who all mentioned their ex-wives within the first ten minutes. Started a drinking game where I did a shot every time someone said “my ex.” Nearly died of alcohol poisoning on date three.

October: My apartment building announced major renovations. I’ve been living with the sound of jackhammers at 7 AM for six weeks. My upstairs neighbour, whom I’ve never met, occasionally drops what sounds like a bowling ball. I’ve developed theories about this. None are particularly reassuring.

November: Thanksgiving dinner at my sister’s, where I was seated at the kids’ table (I’m 42) because “you’d be more comfortable there.” Spent two hours listening to my nephew explain cryptocurrency.

December: Fled to France. Current status: hiding in a ski cabin, talking to myself in two languages, contemplating whether this is “self-care” or just “an OTT escape.”

The wine bottle was empty. Donna eyed the second bottle but kept on typing.

Moving on swiftly.

So that’s my year. No promotions to brag about. No exotic vacations (unless you count this cabin, which is less “romantic ski getaway” and more “Scandinavian murder mystery setting”). No children’s achievements because I don’t have children. No home renovations unless you count changing the shelf liner in my kitchen as an achievement, which my therapist says I should.

I’m not writing this for sympathy. I’m writing it because I’m tired. Tired of pretending everything is fine. Tired of reading everyone else’s perfect Christmas letters and feeling like I’m the only one whose life resembles a dumpster fire in slow motion.

If your year was also terrible, I see you. If you’re also eating cereal for dinner, I salute you. If you’re also wondering how everyone else has it together while you’re held together with caffeine and croissants, welcome to the club.

Merry Christmas everyone

Donna

She read it through once. Laughed. Read it again. Started crying. Laughed again through the tears because the whole thing was absurd—her life, this letter, the fact that she was alone at Christmas, drinking a very robust if not downright vulgar vintage and documenting her failures for an audience of none.

She saved it in a folder titled “Therapeutic Writing—Do Not Send.”

Then she opened her Christmas card list—the master document of everyone she’d ever promised to “stay in touch with.” College roommates. Former colleagues. Her aunt in Milwaukee. That woman from the book club three years ago. The accountant’s mother, who she’d actually liked.

The wine decided to get its own back. Vulgar, eh?

She attached the letter. Typed a quick “Joyeux Noël!” in the subject line. Her finger hovered over “send.”

Don’t, the rational part of her brain said.

Why not, the wine-soaked part responded. What’s the worst that could happen? They’ll think you’re having a breakdown?

I AM having a breakdown. At least be honest about it.

She clicked send.

Then closed the laptop, finished her wine, and went to bed in front of the woodstove, wrapped in blankets, convinced she’d just committed social suicide.

The next morning, she woke to her phone vibrating itself off the bedside table.

Seventeen text messages. Thirty-two emails. Six missed calls.

Her stomach dropped.

She opened the first email with one eye closed, bracing herself for the onslaught.

Donna—I laughed so hard I cried. My year was also garbage. Coffee when you’re back? —Sarah

The next:

THIS. This is what I needed to read. Thank you for being real. Also I’m sorry about Cooper. Dogs are the best people. —Mike

Girl. The accountant’s creative vision? I got divorced this year and no one knows because I’ve been too embarrassed to tell anyone. Can we talk? —Jessica

She scrolled through them, stunned. Forty-seven people.

Her mother called at 8 AM.

“Donna Marie, I got your Christmas letter.”

“Mom, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“It was the best thing I’ve read all year. Why didn’t you tell me how hard things were?”

“Because you raised me to put on a brave face and soldier through?”

A pause. “Well. That was stupid of me. When you get back, we’re having a real conversation. Also, your Aunt Linda called. She’s been divorced three times and wanted me to tell you she has opinions about the accountant situation.”

By noon, Donna had responded to thirty of the messages. Turns out half her contact list was also struggling. The other half had struggled recently and remembered what it felt like.

Her college roommate was going through bankruptcy. Her former boss was in grief counselling after losing his brother. The cheerful couple? Separated. That woman who always posted happy families photos? Her teenager was in rehab.

Everyone is privately falling apart.

That evening, as snow continued falling outside the cabin window, Donna opened her laptop and started a new document. Not a Christmas letter. A group email to the forty-seven people who’d reached out:

How about January the 15th? My apartment (assuming the renovations are done). Let’s stop pretending we have it all together. Who’s in?

Forty-three people responded yes within an hour.

The Making Friends and Maintaining Friendships Masterplan

Life transitions can feel heavy, but friendships remind us that it’s okay to set the weight down, even for a little while. Playfulness isn’t just for children—it’s a powerful way to reconnect and strengthen bonds.

Think about the friends who bring out your silly side—the ones who make you dance in the kitchen, play board games until midnight, or laugh so hard you cry. These moments remind you that even in difficult times, life still has room for lightness.

Today, share one brutally honest thing about your year with people in your inner circle. Don’t perform positivity. Don’t wrap your struggles in inspirational language about “growth” and “silver linings.” Just be honest about having a hard time. Tell the truth about the cereal dinners, the dating disasters, the fact that you’re held together with caffeine and croissants. Worst case scenario: A few people feel uncomfortable with your honesty and don’t respond. Some relatives whisper concerns about you at their holiday dinners. You survive their discomfort and their whispers, and life continues exactly as it was. Best case scenario: You accidentally give dozens of people permission to stop pretending too. Your inbox floods with messages from people who thought they were the only ones struggling—the college friend going through bankruptcy, the former boss in grief counselling, the perfect couple who’s actually separated. You discover that half your contact list was also barely holding it together behind their curated holiday letters, and your honesty becomes the crack in the dam that lets everyone else’s truth pour out. You end up hosting a “Disasters of 2025” dinner in January where forty-three people show up, and somewhere in that room full of honest humans, you find your people—the ones who’ve been waiting for someone to be brave enough to say “I’m not okay” so they could finally say “me neither,” and you build a community based on the radical act of telling the truth about your dumpster fire year while everyone else was posting highlight reels.

Have you ever sent (or been tempted to send) a brutally honest holiday update instead of the usual highlight reel? What stopped you—or what made you do it?

Newsletter Subscription

I’m still collecting subscriptions to my news letter with these post, so if you haven’t subscribed already and would you like to find out what type of friend you are, how well you know your friends or if you and a new friend really are compatible, subscribe my filling in your email address in the box below and I’ll send you a set of light-hearted quizzes, quotes and questions to help you do just that. Just fill in the form below and you’ll get immediate access to them all. You can unsubscribe from this list effortlessly and at any time. Included:

–How well do you know your Friends? Quiz
– What is Your Friendship Style? and Are your Friendship Styles compatible? Quiz
– 20 of the Most Inspiring Friends and Friendship Quotes and
– 20 lighthearted Questions you can ask to get to know a new Friend

Discover how to build meaningful, lasting friendships and create a support system that truly has your back—delivered straight to your inbox!