Why Do We Run Round Like Headless Chickens Before Christmas?
posted on December 20th, 2009 by Robyn Pearce
Yesterday I went to my office to start on my last Top Time Tips ezine for the year. Instead, I found msyelf having fun sorting and clearing ‘rats and mice’ paperwork that had been lurking on the fringe of my awareness for too long.
Was I procrastinating? It didn’t feel like it. Instead it seemed like a very good use of time – getting everything tidy before we close down for our Kiwi mid-summer holiday. I also noticed a sense of satisfaction in knowing that when the team starts again in mid-January (and with a new staff member to train as well) I’d be good to go, rather than having old stale ‘stuff’ yelling silently at me.
And then I began to reflect on why so many of us have this sense of compulsion to finalise things at Christmas, at least down this end of the world where Christmas and summer dance together. (Does it happen in the Northern Hemisphere too? )
Ask any Kiwi or Aussie tradesman and they’ll tell you that quite low-level jobs for normally quite reasonable people suddenly develop a crazy ‘gotta-be-done’ energy a few weeks before Christmas. The pressure builds; the stress builds; the world seems to do this mad headless-chook flap every year!
Why do you think so many people get hooked into the (sometimes frenetic) rush-around that typically signals the end of another year?
Let me test this theory on you – and I’d love your comments.
Is it because we’re wired to strive for completion? And I also wonder if it’s something to do with energy?
Think about how you feel when you’ve completed a project and put all the elements away. Or, how you feel when you’ve tidied up your office, your bedroom, your garage or your pantry. I’ve never yet come across someone who doesn’t get a lift of energy.
And then, at some very profound level (maybe even at a spiritual level), is a year end a contextual marker – the external manifestation of the end of one thing and the beginning of another? Is it the feeling that we get a chance to improve next year? To try again? To open a new page on our life?
Blimey, that is philosophical! All because I tidied up some paperwork! (But the office sure as heck feels GREAT!)
Hi Robyn
Interesting thoughts, it is ritualistic to end the year with a clean up of the old in preparation for the new. For many of us who work in organisations that have calender year cut offs for our work patterns, we are given very strong encouragements to complete projects in this manner, think of the annual reports that have to be written documenting the years achievements (not usually the years failures). Often for people do the big annual clean up, this includes cleaning down desk space, the wiping away of gathered dust and other debris – very cathartic and so very symbolic. I am planning on such a session this coming Wednesday, leaving my work space shiny and new for the New Year.
Hi Robyn, you put it into words very well.
In my case…. it’s clean-up time for people who will be coming into the house to stay. And I can actually goad John into helping!
Here’s a funny for you…
Christmas says ‘Hello’, then says BUY BUY.
Enjoy the family.
love, Mary
Hi Robyn,
Great confirmation of exactly what happens. I strove to build a rabbit hutch for my twin girls this Xmas break and it took me 3 days intense focus. The girls drew up a rough sketch, the hutch grew to a handsome 2.5m*1mwide*1m deep.
It had a secod storey added + a nesting area. All in all striving to have it complete by the New Year led me soldiering on from 815am till 945pm on the last day. Truly a testament to closing things out by EOY. It did provude me energy and a new beginning albeit that I did sleep for 10 hours the next morning as it all caught up on me.
In hindsight am guessing it would have taken us even longer had we not drawn up a plan and cutting list. Phew!
Anyway Happy New Year and looking forward to a prosperous 2010 for all.