Thanks to award-winning filmmaker Ken Wardrop, we finally have an honest film about the holidays with his documentary So This Is Christmas (part of the 2024 Hot Docs Festival). Beautifully shot in 35 mm, the film allows us to really explore the pressure many face to be joyous and full of cheer at a time that can really amplify feelings of loneliness.
Set in an Irish town, Wardrop takes us through the emotional journey five characters go through in the days leading up to Christmas. From the anxiety of having enough money to buy presents, to feeling isolated at a time expected to be spent with a whole crowd of people, Wardrop so delicately and captivatingly brings us into the homes of these individuals, providing a sort of social commentary on these holiday pressures.
As Wardrop explained to Yahoo Canada, his own personal experiences over Christmas inspired him to begin the process of making So This Is Christmas.
“When I was 12, my grandma passed away on Christmas Day, and she was living with us, … and that had an impact on Christmas thereafter, because we just remember trauma,” Wardrop shared. “It just became a darker time of year.”
But Wardrop’s Christmas trauma doesn’t stop there. Once his brother went missing because, as Wardrop described, he was sick of all the bickering. Another time his father collapsed, and on a separate year, his cousin’s dog ran away.
More recently, Wardrop’s niece, who is a single mother, talked to him about struggling financially all year round, but Christmas is particularly “traumatic” for her because there’s pressure to “keep up” with what friends of her two sons get over the holiday.
“It’s the lead up to all of this pressure about making Christmas perfect,” Wardrop said. “[We see] the beautiful Christmas tree in the window, … the lady with the two trolleys in the Christmas market, and you’re there with your little basket.”
“It sort of reminds us of all the problems that we have and what we don’t have.”
Christmas is ‘impossible to escape’
What’s particularly impressive about So This Is Christmas is that everyone is incredibly honest. From Mary who has an eating disorder and tries to get out of Christmas dinner, to Jason, a father grieving the loss of his wife to cervical cancer.
“We were really foot soldiers out on the ground talking to people, going to the smaller organizations in those towns, people that worked maybe with Meals on Wheels, which an organization that delivers food to older people who are living alone,” Wardrop explained. “Someone like Jason, a single dad, … everybody knew him.”
“Because they were so vulnerable, … we had a psychologist who works with us on when they would have seen the film and making sure that they were very comfortable, … and sharing the rough cut stage to say, ‘This is where we’re heading. How do you feel?’ … It’s a shared experience.”
It may sound simple, but it’s those everyday moments that Wardrop captures that also makes So This Is Christmas feel so refreshingly honest, like just the number of times people are asked, when they’re just popping to a shop, going about their business, “What are you doing for Christmas?”
“Christmas is so food orientated and everywhere you go it’s in your face or you’re being asked, ‘Where are you going? Will it be a lot coming for dinner?’ It is impossible to escape,” Wardrop said. “And it is a reminder that every time you go up to a counter or you meet someone, at that time a year, it is all about what is happening on Christmas Day.”
“If you know what your reality on Christmas Day is going to be, it’s tough to have to answer that question. We’re all human and it’s very hard to be honest and say, ‘Actually no, it’s going to be sh-t. Sitting on my hands because I can’t afford to have the heating on. I’m going to be freezing. I’ve got a ready-cooked meal waiting for me.’ You can’t say that. You want to put on a smile.”
‘We’ve lost Christmas to the commercialization. There’s no going back’
But while Wardrop and the So This Is Christmas crew were filming people in this Irish town, they had to leave them for Christmas.
“It was difficult,” Wardrop shared. “That drive home from Jason’s on Christmas Eve, I remember that for a long time and just the feelings of my own, and the privilege that I had because I knew I was going back to a warm house and caring partner.”
A major question is whether we’ll ever actually be able to move away from this holiday pressure, if everyone across societies will understand that the holidays are a particularly hard time for many, and we’ll normalize those feelings of anxiety and loneliness. Wardrop believes that’s not very likely to happen.
“We’ve lost Christmas to the commercialization. There’s no going back,” he said. “Christmas will be Coca-Cola Santa.”
“I remember back to my Christmases, I always got a surprise from Santa. … That’s not what I remember about Christmas though, … I just remember just being in the presence of my mum and dad, having those moments, and the fire being lit in the living room, the ‘good’ room that we never used, and mum coming down early and having a lovely breakfast. And having a new pyjamas because granny would have bought it for me, and just being in front of the fire with the family. But those things, … they’re just different now. We had very little growing up, but we seemed to have so much more, because we didn’t need for anything or want for anything. Now it’s all about wanting, and what will I get.”
