Wendy K. Laidlaw

So spare a thought and send a prayer for the living this Christmas time.

A prayer for those who feel the pressure to attend the family gatherings when everything inside their body makes them want to run away and hide.

A prayer for those on their own this Christmas, tackling all the marketing messages from the big commercial companies

and trying to make sense of their decision to protect themselves and separate from the trauma of what Christmas should be.

It is not all tinsel.

It is not all shiny and bright and joyful.

It can be very many tears for a chunk of society and it is worth a moment's silence during Christmas Day to put good thoughts for them.

I'm lucky.

After many decades of dreadful and disastrous Christmases, one involving my grandmother's wired-haired terrier dog jumping up and biting my neck at the meal table and her subsequently crying over filled puddings in the kitchen, my Christmas feels very blessed and special.

Yes, I have succumbed to the purchasing of the very expensive real Christmas tree, as this is an important tradition still for my son.

And yes, we've decorated it with lots of lights and bulbils and tinsel, and it looks like Blackpool illuminations.

Yes, we have purchased modest gifts for each other and put them under the tree, but this Christmas will be our third, with the three of us, where we have loud music on, laugh at anything that goes wrong, relax and enjoy the drama-free and trauma-free atmosphere, and relish in how lucky we are to have broken free from the pressure and the noise of the ghosts of Christmas past.

We will go to church on Christmas Eve to get into the Christmas spirit and remember why it is a day of celebration.

Note I say one day of celebration and not 90 plus days.

And I will pray for those less fortunate.

For the many lonely and lost people let down by society's fascination with commercialism over community.

The focus of money over what matters.

And what matters is safety, security and realism.

I know too many beautiful souls that will spend their Christmas away from family because for them and their upbringing, family signified abuse and or trauma.

The mocking, the ridicule, the put-downs, snide remarks and criticisms from toxic, narcissistic people who were supposed to be the safest people in the world to them.