December 6, 2025 – 19 Days to Christmas
A Christmas Gift
A Christmas Story: The Spa Day That Went Sideways
For Lesley
By the time Claire Dubois signed her divorce papers on December 18th, she felt as if she had spent five years inside a malfunctioning emotional blender—one of those noisy, lid-jumping contraptions with several warning labels and a tendency to splatter carrot puree on the ceiling. So when her three closest friends—Sophie, Marianne, and Elodie—announced they were taking her to Bagnères-de-Bigorre for a spa day to celebrate her newfound freedom, Claire didn’t protest. She needed heat. She needed pampering. She needed steam, serenity, and something resembling a full nervous system reboot before facing Christmas dinner with her well-meaning but relentlessly nosy family.
The drive to the Pyrenees felt like slipping inside a snow globe. Fresh powder dusted the mountain peaks like royal icing on a gingerbread landscape. The air smelled of pine resin, wood smoke, and cold stone. Christmas lights twinkled from the windows of wooden chalets along the road—reds and golds reflecting off the snow—and somewhere in the distance a church bell chimed Adeste Fideles, muffled by the crisp mountain air. Roadside vendors sold roasted chestnuts and vin chaud from steaming pots. By the time the four women arrived at the thermal spa—its elegant stone façade rising out of the valley, draped in garlands of pine and white lights—Claire felt her shoulders finally unclench.
Which was, of course, the moment the day started slipping sideways.
Inside the spa, a calming soundtrack of flutes and trickling water played, occasionally interrupted by instrumental versions of Christmas carols that made “Silent Night” sound like meditation music. Miniature Christmas trees dotted the reception area, their ornaments catching the soft amber light. Each locker offered a neatly folded white cocoon of terry cloth. Sophie’s and Marianne’s looked plush enough to double as duvets. Claire’s XXXS version looked like it had shrunk in the wash—or been designed for an unusually modest elf. She tried to put it on anyway. It wrapped around her torso with all the generosity of a disgruntled dish towel. Her left hip staged an immediate escape attempt. Elodie took one look and doubled over laughing, loud enough to attract stares from two indignant retirees in matching terry cloth, attempting to preserve the sanctity of spa silence. Claire couldn’t help it—she had to laugh too, the kind of laughter that bubbled up unexpectedly like champagne.
She marched to the reception, one hand clamped across her chest to preserve her dignity (and modesty, although why she bothers…), the other attempting to hold the robe closed. The receptionist, without even blinking, sighed as though this was a daily occurrence and murmured, “Oh. Yes. Er, our apologies.” She disappeared into a back room and returned with a robe so enormous Claire could have hosted a community meeting inside it. But it fit, and it was warm, and smelled faintly of cinnamon. Disaster averted.
Robe secured, the four friends floated toward the outdoor thermal pool. Steam rose in soft curtains from the turquoise water, backlit by strings of white lights wound through the surrounding pine trees. Snowflakes drifted from the grey winter sky, melting the instant they touched the surface. The air smelled of minerals and eucalyptus, with an undertone of mulled wine from the spa bar, a scent suggesting festive promise. Claire lowered herself into the water and felt it envelop her like a warm exhale from the earth itself.
“This is bliss,” she sighed, leaning back. “This I could get used to.”
The universe, hearing her, chuckled and said, “Hold my spiced cider.”
Just as Claire began to relax, a sudden roar erupted behind her. Before she could turn around, something flew across the water. Her robe. The huge, heavy, comforting robe she had laid neatly on the pool’s edge was now spinning in the water like a squid being sucked toward the filtration intake. She lunged for it. She missed. People turned. A few applauded. The lifeguard—wearing a Santa hat over his regulation cap—sighed, retrieved a long pole, and began fishing for it with resigned professionalism. When he finally hauled it out, limp, dripping and drowned, the receptionist materialised at her side with another, working hard to keep her face straight.
Her friends were laughing so hard they could barely stay afloat, which made Claire laugh too—big, helpless, ridiculous laughter that made her cheeks hurt. The kind she hadn’t felt in far too long.
They eventually staggered their way to the hammam, decorated with a small garland of eucalyptus and holly above the entrance. Inside, the steam was so thick Claire couldn’t see the bench in front of her, the walls around her, or the limits of her own personal space. Voices echoed strangely in the fog, disembodied. Someone murmured “over here,” and Claire, imagining she was moving toward Marianne, took a confident step forward, reached out, and sat down.
On a stranger.
A very startled, very unclothed stranger.
His shocked gasp cut through the steam like a foghorn. A moment later, the steam parted enough for Claire to see his horrified eyes, wide as poached eggs. Claire yelped, jumped up, slipped on condensation, and skidded across the tile floor with the helpless momentum of a baby deer encountering ice for the first time. Somewhere behind her, her friends dissolved again into uncontrollable laughter—the sort that suggested they might need medical attention.
The man coughed. “Is okay,” he wheezed. “I think… you break no bones?”
“My dignity,” Claire said, “is in traction.”
After the hammam debacle, they attempted lunch. The spa café smelled promising: roasted chestnuts, mulled wine, something buttery and cinnamon-spiced. A small Christmas tree stood in the corner, its lights twinkling hopefully. But their soup—described enthusiastically by the waitress as “rustic, warming, a heritage recipe from the mountains”—arrived as a beige, flavourless puddle that somehow managed to be the exact opposite of every comforting winter meal promised by the season. They seasoned it. They stirred it. They attempted to coax character out of it. Nothing helped. Sophie said, “It tastes like my last relationship: bland, lukewarm, and profoundly disappointing.” Finally, Elodie announced, “It tastes like beige had a personality and lost it halfway through therapy. Beyond redemption.”
At sunset, they finally made their way to the rooftop hot tub. Steam curled into the cold winter sky. The Pyrenean peaks blushed pink and peach as daylight faded, their snow-covered slopes glowing like they’d been dusted with silver. In the distance, church bells chimed. Claire felt herself melt into the warm water, into the moment, in the presence of the three women who had held her up through the darkest season of her life.
“I thought today was supposed to be calming,” she smiled.
“Oh, it was never going to be calm,” Sophie replied. “We don’t do calm. We do… memorable.”
“Thank you,” Claire said. “For today. For all of it. A Christmas gift I’ll never forget. For making sure I didn’t spend Christmas week crying while binging on not-yet-discounted chocolate.”
“Even though everything went wrong?” Sophie asked.
“Because everything went wrong. My marriage was about everything going right. Perfect plans, perfect image, perfect relationship. Perfect Christmases with matching sweaters and colour-coordinated gift wrap. And it was hell.” She paused, watching a snowflake land on her finger and melt. “This was about everything going wrong. And it was perfect.”
They clinked plastic spa cups of spicy herbal tea together.
Marianne proposed, “To the worst spa day ever.”
“To freedom,” Sophie toasted.
“To questionable spa etiquette,” Elodie added.
“To friendship,” Claire whispered. “
| Today, be the friend who shows up when needed. Don’t wait for the perfect moment or the perfect Christmas gift. Just show up—and create the messy, imperfect memory. Worst case scenario: Nothing goes to plan, someone sits on a stranger in a hammam, and you all eat terrible soup while questioning your life choices. Best case scenario: Years later, when your friend thinks about that difficult Christmas, they won’t remember the pain as much as they remember you—showing up with ridiculous robes and refusing to let them face it alone, turning the worst spa day ever into the moment they realised that love looks like friends who stay through no matter what goes wrong. |
The Making Friends and Maintaining Friendships Masterplan
Christmas reminds us of the joy of giving, but sometimes, we hesitate. In our friendships, we often hold back. We hesitate before reaching out, before offering help, before being the first to say “I’m thinking of you.” We worry about seeming needy, or too much, or like we care more than they do.
True generosity in friendship isn’t transactional. It’s not a ledger that needs balancing by year-end. It’s the quiet decision to reach out simply because you want to—because someone matters to you, because connection itself is the reward, because giving from genuine affection needs no return on investment.
Forget the perfect Christmas gift. A small act of kindness—a thoughtful message at 11 PM because something reminded you of them, a shared memory that says “remember when we laughed until we couldn’t breathe?”, a surprise gesture that requires no occasion beyond “I saw this and thought of you”—these moments carry more weight than we realise. They brighten someone’s day in ways you might never witness.
This Christmas season, be the friend who reaches out first.
Sometimes the greatest gift we give is letting someone know they’re worth the effort.
What questions can you ask to get to know a new friend? How do you know if you and a new friend are really compatible? I have created 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. I’ll also add you to my newsletter list, though 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!
Today’s (Other) Blog Post
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