Messed up things about Christmas you only notice as an adult

Let's begin with a disclaimer: Christmas is a magical time. It's cozy, it's exciting, it's full of family and friends and gifts and drinking and trees and lights and all sorts of other awesome things. Christmas, as a child, is even better. It's full of all that stuff (except the drinking, obviously), but if you're lucky, you never know the dark side to it all. Yes, there's a macabre underbelly to the festive season, and it only takes one bad year to demonstrate that to you — it can be exhausting, stressful, dramatic, expensive and even downright dangerous, but it's only as you enter your adult years that you really come to realize this. Grip your nostalgia tight because these grim little quirks will have you yearning for December to end in no time at all.

Perhaps as a natural successor to all the stress of Christmas comes the total, utter exhaustion. Anyone over the age of 25 who can reach Boxing Day without wanting to curl up and hibernate for an entire year is a special person. Stress, of course, is a factor, and has a major impact on your physical state of being. But the hangovers, the huge meals, and the constant requirement to socialize don't help matters.

Naturally, if you've got kids, this becomes so, so much worse. Your to-do list triples, and your entire festive season becomes chock-full of relentless chores and activities: attending school events, getting Christmas shopping done, hoarding masses of food for the big day itself, keeping the kids under control, decorating, wrapping — and your normal, day-to-day life doesn't ease up. You still have to shower and do laundry. Adulthood is exhausting. Children are exhausting. Christmas is exhausting. Throw them all together and you've got a recipe that'll wipe you out at the drop of a knitted winter hat.

Family is a fairly huge part of Christmas. When you're a child, it means spending time with your own immediate family, or occasionally going on some cross-country jaunt to visit your grandparents or cousins or whomever else. When you're an adult, it means — well, pretty much the same thing, just with the risk of everything being far more awkward than it used to be.

See, adults don't get on with each other like children do. If you're interacting with people you haven't seen for a year (or more), there are a number of pitfalls to navigate if you don't want things to get tense. Politics, for example, is a big one, but any sticky topic can quickly turn things sour, and sometimes, sadly, people just don't get on. Christmas, wonderful time of year that it is, doesn't care about these pitfalls — it jams you into a room with these people and doesn't care one jot whether you like them or not. There are ways to deal with the never-ending small talk, the controversies, and the dramas, but you can't predict anything with Uncle Randy. And usually you're just trying to paper over the wounds caused by the political discussion that got out of control at Thanksgiving.

Ah, the gifts. When you're young, it's the best part of Christmas. You can try to get all pious and argue to the contrary if you want, but you're lying and you know it. As a kid, opening your presents is by far the most exciting part of Christmas. Nowadays, however, the gift-giving tradition — while undoubtedly an appealing one — constitutes just another minefield that could blow up in your face.

The Huffington Post quite succinctly explains the awkward dynamics behind the giving of gifts: having to fake appreciation of an unsuitable gift, straining to figure out something thoughtful to offer somebody else, trying to work out who you should and should not get gifts for — there are so many places to go wrong. And, God forbid, should somebody's distaste for a gift break through the forcefield of passive-aggression and come out into the open, all hell might break loose. We'd all be trading equal-value gift cards by now if it wasn't so tacky and pointless.

The trials and tribulations of the holidays can put a load of pressure on even the most hardy individual, so you can probably imagine what it does to couples. Yes, according to David McCandless and Lee Byron of Information is Beautiful, Christmas ranks second (just behind spring break) as a time of year where people are most likely to break up.

A number of factors, including the high levels of stress and depression you might feel, the self-reflection incited by the experience of going through the holidays with a partner and even the expectations of gift-giving can all lead you down a road which ends in a split. An opposite effect can materialize, of course — the cheer of Christmas often helps to reinforce the foundations of good relationships — but if you're on slippery ground, there's a good chance you'll lose your footing.

The devastating truth behind Christmas is that it's a tragically unhappy time for many people. Loneliness is a serious issue for many, and can lead to bouts of depression for those left alone during the holidays, including the 29 percent of people over the age of 65 who live alone in the U.S., according to government statistics. Child homelessness is, of course, rife: U.K. government data suggested that, in 2016, over 120,000 children in England, Scotland, and Wales were in temporary accommodation over the Christmas period. And, as we've mentioned, people go hungry over the festive season, too — just as many who go hungry during the year.

You might be having a great, booze-filled eating season during which you gripe about your stress levels and having to grit your teeth through a conversation with that family member, but not everyone is so fortunate. There are lots of ways to help others during this time, but it often takes entry into adulthood to begin to realize this, and, even then, many don't.