First of all, I hope everyone reading this had a great Christmas! Yes, this is a belated Christmas post. I wanted to post something happy and merry on the day but honestly I was too miserable to have the motivation to do anything – especially fake happiness on my blog.

I didn’t have the happiest of Christmases this year…

Truth is, Christmas was really hard for me this year. Initially, I was working front of house in a theatre and doubted I would be given the time off. But then I got a new job, and the uncertainty of going home felt even bigger. I didn’t know how relaxed this new company would be around the holidays. I also didn’t receive my schedule until early December. In hindsight, I could have gone home knowing now how easy it is to work from home. But by the time I found that out in my first week, the new problem was now the price of trains. It was too expensive to plan to go home last minute for Christmas.

I was comfortable with the decision to stay in London for Christmas until the actual day came. All I wanted to do was cry (and I did cry). When I’m down there’s a handful of people I usually go spill it all out to, but this was different. I couldn’t talk to them because I didn’t want to ruin their Christmas. So I just cried and pretended that it wasn’t Christmas. Tried to make it ‘just another day’ to make it feel better in my head.

I know it’s rich of me to mope around when technically I could have made it work. There’s people who couldn’t spend it with their families last year because of lockdown restrictions, and people who couldn’t do it this year because of testing positive for covid. There’s people out there who don’t get along with their families or have lost someone and therefore the holidays are always a difficult time. So I want to give big hugs to anyone else who didn’t have the best Christmas this year.

The things that did make me happy this holiday season…

Despite having a really difficult time being away from home, I am grateful for my friends Sam and Michaela. We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day baking Christmas cookies and watching movies. My Christmas would have been so much worse if I was not only away from my family, but spending it completely alone.

I’m lucky to have friends like them, lucky to spend Christmas in my new flat, and lucky to have this new job. With my old job, I think in the end I would have gotten the holiday to go home for Christmas. But honestly, I’d much rather have this new job. In what has been a really difficult year for me, not being with my family felt like the rotten cherry on top. But I know next year is going to be better. The wait has been what feels like an eternity but it seems like things are finally shifting in my favour. So I got through this Christmas with the promise of a better 2022 ahead.

Anyway, check out the Christmas cookies we made in the photo above. I was really proud with how they turned out. We used the recipe from Jane’s Patisserie but swapped the white chocolate out for a cream cheese frosting. They were delicious!

Did you do any Christmas baking this year? Let me know in the comments!