The build up to Christmas lasts for months (11 months if you're some the sort of person who gets featured on TV shows called 'The Woman Who Celebrates Christmas Every Day Despite Having Joyless Eyes'), the stress of shopping and drinking and then continuing to work despite the fact you've been drinking slowly eats away at you until the day arrives and everything rushes out in a stream of exhaustion. The relief, or anticlimax, can manifest itself in strange ways; once, on Christmas Day, I culled 400 friends on Facebook while working through a selection box.
Then comes the Time Afterwards. Those empty days where you languish at home wishing NYE was here but also wishing it wasn't because you haven't planned anything and your mate won't text you back about the tickets for that thing you were all supposed to do. It's a state of limbo, a chrysalis of getting fed by your parents while you watch Chicken Run.
But it doesn't have to be this way. There are so many things you could do, instead of lying in 'til 3pm eating leftover roast and watching old episodes of the OC before falling asleep at 3am. Just me? Coooool.
**Take up a new hobby **
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA sorry, just thought we'd start with something really realistic. After you've spent a month poisoning yourself with Christmas parties (both physically and emotionally), eating yourself into a carb coma and trying to make conversation with your cousin's daughter who is two and has absolutely no chat, why not take up French? Or sailing? Or origami? In all seriousness though, if you've been given one of those 'how-to' presents that in no way correlate with your personality, you might as well give it a whirl. Then, when someone asks you what you've done while sitting in the countryside for a week with no WiFi you can say 'I made a horse out of a napkin'
**Have a wank **
Another one.
**Throw a party **
One for the city gals/people who still talk to their homefriends - considering everyone's in the same boat, why don't you all start sailing the boat to Party Island? Either organise piss-up in a brewery or throw a party in your own flat/someone else's flat who has a free flat (depending on your circumstances). The 28th is peak party time, because you've got enough days to prep for NYE and you've had enough of a break so your parents won't cry if you say you're going out, going back, or using the living room as a makeshift club. Bill the party as a Christmas-NYE Vortex Party, then I'll bill you for the copyright because you totally stole my creative idea. And invite someone called Bill.
**Go to a park **
If you live in the city, and this is the first time you've been home in a while, then make the effort to go and see something natural. You'll regret it when you're back in Chokesville (reference to the pollution not the regular strangulation) where you only ever see three trees and they're growing out the side of a block of flats. Maybe take your dog and run around for a bit. Do something outside.
Have Skype sex
I dunno, what else are you going to do? There's no signal, your parents might pick up the landline at any minute, you brought your laptop in case you needed to watch *Romy and Michele's High School Reunion *alone in the dark for a bit, and you haven't seen your boyfriend for at least three days. Dim the lights (or not), put on some sexy underwear (or not) and have some Skype lovin' (I have never had Skype lovin' so feel like a fraud telling you to do it).
Watch daytime TV
Gather your siblings, turn the sound down, allocate characters and improvise what you think the people are saying on the screen. OK that sounds so much shitter when written down but it's really fun, promise. Or you could play an actual game like Cranium or Pictionary or, the king of Christmas Vortex Joy: Articulate.
**Lie face down in the garden **
Make moaning noises
Hit eBay
Time to sell all the shit you'll never use, and now you've got the time to do proper pictures (with a backdrop!) and a detailed description and everything. Clothes, shoes and accessories are perfect for eBay - and anything designer will also go down a treat. Bedsocks and hankies might be more difficult to shift, so try scribbling on them with a marker pen and flogging them as signed Harry Styles merchandise. Or alternatively, just print out pictures of Harry Styles on glossy paper, sign them and eBay them. Oh my god I think I'm a genius.
**Go for a run **
Sorry, but it'll really give you a boost. No really! OK I'll leave.
**Have coffee with a home friend you haven't seen since 1804 **
You know how it is - you lost touch, she lost touch, you went to different parts of the UK chasing different professions and she got married and bought a house and is trying for a baby and you live with a 21 year old Chinese student and an 98 year old Polish woman in a house share with about half a metre squared of floorspace and no heating. Why not reconnect? She's happy. She's stable. But - oh there it is! - she's just made a remark about how he never cleans the dishwasher through gritted teeth and now you don't feel so bad about your life after all. Relief.
Go To Winter Wonderland
Muse on the transcience of life and how, in the end, there'll be another Winter Wonderland. But how many? Who knows. Also, why do they keep Winter Wonderland's running beyond Christmas? Really weird.
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Follow Stevie on Twitter: @5tevieM
Illustration: Alex Coll
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.