Krysia Hello and welcome to this episode of the Autism and Theology podcast. I'm Krysia, and it's great that you've joined us this week. The podcast is a space where we engage with the latest conversations in the field of autism and theology, sharing relevant resources, and promoting ways to help faith and non faith communities enable autistic people to flourish. If you would like to access the transcript of the episode, it can be found in the link in the show notes and today on CatChat. Zoe, Ian and I are going to have a chat about New Year's Eve and basically managing the festive season as a neurodivergent person more broadly.So I guess almost a good place to start would be how do we celebrate New Year's Eve? Zoe So in Scotland we call it Hogmanay, so just putting that out there for our Scottish listeners or anyone else who calls it Hogmanay, not New Year's Eve. Yeah, we kind of celebrate it quite differently. What we've worked out is we like doing a year about like we'll have a year of like going with friends, maybe like out? Yeah, out somewhere with friends one year and then the next year we'll do it quite chill and we find that works quite nicely for us. Like two years ago we were in Inverness with friends and if anyone's familiar with Johnny Fox, was it Johnny Fox? No. Oh, what's it called? Who? A nannies. If anyone's familiar. That's where we went. And Inverness. And it was so much fun. And it was just like a trans Scottish band. And then last year, I think we saw my brother-in-law and sister and just like chilled in front of the TV and didn't really do much and saw the bells on the TV. And we like that kind of works. Thanks. You've got like a bit of rotation and then it breaks that expectation of like oh, I need to go out and have fun because where we like doing that sometimes it's also nice just to relax when Christmas is a busy time and, so yeah, this year we're going to a wee party at a friend's house, and yeah, I do quite like New Year's Eve or Hogmanay. Now I'm calling it all the rest of you call it. Yeah, it's always, like, a fun kind of. I don't know, it just feels nice. It's like another excuse to, like, dress up and enjoy. Yeah. Enjoy being around people and enjoy having a bit of a laugh and a bit of a sing and a bit of a dance, yeah. Ian I am wildly conflicted about New Year's Eve because I do. It is one of those few occasions that we have that are shared culturally anymore. We just have precious few of those anymore where everybody is literally doing the same thing or focused on the same thing or together, in a sense, and yet I absolutely abhor basically everything that everyone does on New Year's Eve. Like I just don't. I don't enjoy the celebration. I don't enjoy the noise. I don't enjoy the crowds. You know, a lot of people pack in like sardines into Times Square. Or wherever here in the US, just to like, watch the ball drop. And I'm like, why? That sounds horrible. Why would you do that? I don't. I do not understand the appeal, or even if you're just partying together with people, it's just often a lot of people crammed into a room waiting till midnight, getting really loud and then, you know, slowly, petering out. And it for me, I I don't know. It's just always anticlimactic. Right. I just never, you know, I don't mean to sound like a curmudgeon, but it's literally no different from any other day of the year, right? We have just arbitrarily decided that now the calendar rolls over. So now we have a different number at the end of the year. And it's not. It's tangibly no different otherwise. So it's just most of the time, the way that we celebrate in my household is just like we'll turn on the celebrations in Australia, you know, to see them celebrating New Year's and that happens early enough that I don't have to alter my routine at all and I could be like, yeah, a new year, hurray, game over. Or we're done. We did it and that's it, yeah. Zoe I think I'd actually say like with what you're saying about it being anticlimactic, I fully agree, and I think I started enjoying Hogmanay more when I realised it was anticlimactic and like, that's kind of all right. Yeah. I think, like, that was probably a few years ago. Yeah, Krysia, what - how do you celebrate? Krysia Well, in Kent, we call it really boring New New Year's Eve for a start, and I've never really done that much because I find it just exhausting even when I was younger and I did go round to friends and you stay up and watch the fireworks on the telly like I'm in London or the other places, I'd often I find I can't sleep through the fireworks, but then it's just kind of a matter of sitting up and waiting and hanging around. What my partner and I currently do is we always order a pizza on New Year's Eve. I think it started as a 2 for Tuesday deal when we were both students for. It might have been Domino's. We usually go for Domino's, but we might. We'll have to see where we go this this year. And then we just kind of chill and he likes Jules Holland. I like the fireworks have to just swap around between the two. The other thing I all generally also generally do is go on Animal Crossing because my sister plays Animal Crossing, as do I when I can find my switch, I still haven't found it after moving house. Or the wire to charge it somewhere in this house. And then we'll go to each other's islands and look at the countdown on Animal Crossing. It's really wholesome and cute, and it means that I can be in bed in my pyjamas, celebrating inverted commas for the kind of the inverted commas sign for anyone who's obviously easing as well, gesticulating it to Zoe and Ian as we talk. Zoe I love that Animal Crossing always. I used to like and when I first got my switch, I would like go on Animal Crossing on Christmas Day for a few years because it's always like fun on Christmas Day and there's always like snow and little christmasy things. It's a good way to mark seasons and events. I think the only thing like I found funny is maybe I'm completely wrong in this, but I feel like New Year's Day must, like, used to be a bigger thing than New Year's Eve, and now it's like kind of the other way around. Krysia I think so, and I think certainly for my family because it's my sister's birthday right at the beginning of January. We've always done stuff on New Year's Day for her because it's her birthday the next day. But other than that, no one else has really ever. Things are kind of stopped happening and she always gets really cross that she can't really do anything. Zoe Mm-hmm. Krysia Friends have gone out, especially since uni and that go out and no they couldn't do anything while they were busy doing new year stuff, so it must really suck for her having a really early January birthday. But I guess we've always done stuff for her. And around kind of her birthday and going out for a meal or going for I said Carvery. I'm a vegetarian. I have a Mac and cheese at Toby Carvery. Everyone else has a carvery. Zoe Nice. Ian I think I New Year's Day is just my speed, right? I actually really love New Year's Day because you have that same idea of that same sort of shared culture around it in that all the shops are closed, right? You can't really do anything on New Year's Day. It feels like you're together but separate, which is like perfect for me, right? We're all doing the same thing. We're having a shared cultural moment, but it means that everything slows down and everything's calm and quiet. And so I love New Year's Day in some ways, for the same reason that I love Christmas. Not for the same reasons. Obviously there are additional reasons to love Christmas, but what I love about Christmas Day is everything's just so quiet, right? Everybody's chill you can, you know, it's like the world slows down. For once in its life, and I just love that it's just pleasant I guess. Zoe Yeah, I get that. And then I think as well when like Christmas and New Year and maybe like birthdays as well, I guess it's like the few days where you can set for me. Anyway I find it's one of the few days where I can do nothing and not feel guilty about it. I can do nothing other days, but I always feel guilty whereas it's that like sweet like. Just kind of, but I'm not going to do anything and that's fine because it's New Year's Day and no one's doing anything. No one expects you to do anything. There's it's like guilt free relaxation, which then is forced relaxation, which is good. Yeah. Ian Yeah, yeah, we just we we spend so much of our time the entire rest of the year feeling like the only value that we have is based on what we accomplish and for at least a couple days, right, Christmas and New Year's are really to my mind, the only ones where this is true the whole day. No one cares what you accomplish. No one cares what you get done. You can just hang out and relax and be yourself. And that's that's you've accomplished what the day is for. Krysia Yeah. Zoe Yeah. I wonder if I guess you kind of like not explicit like kind of touched on this and this is not a question I can answer, but I wonder if yeah, either both of you would like to share F and how or I guess does being autistic shape how you celebrate New Year? Krysia I guess for me it's what does, but what doesn't because I'd never go to a big party in a nightclub because of the sensory stuff, but the same time, even if I wasn't, that's just not what I'm interested in. So I think it's that interplay of doing what's best for me and some of that automatically meets my autistic needs and some of it meets other kind of personality needs that I have. At the same time I guess what I did like is when I chatted to Harriet in for the December episode, she's saying about her kit list on the Excel sheet and I've never met a family that do that, but I'm really wondering if that kind of stuff is something I can almost bring in myself to make it a bit more explicitly controlled. Because there are certainly, I find the festive season, especially in December, even though I'm not clergy, just overall demanding of got to buy presents. Got to wrap them, got to send Christmas cards, got to buy stamps, you know, got to sort out travel plans. Got to do this. Got to do that. Got to book annual leave that actually by the time we get around to January, I'm quite relieved, so I've guessed being autistic shapes the way that I managed that overwhelm, if that makes sense. But I don't use a spreadsheet like Harriet's family, I really should. Ian Yeah. I think for me, I I do think, I mean, I've always, I, I I've never casted in those terms in part because most of the New Year's Eve's where I've tried to celebrate and tried to sort of live up to cultural expectations around the eve. I did not know I was autistic, and so I've just made myself miserable because I assumed that everyone else was miserable. But it's just what you do, right that. Yeah, OK. We're all going to have a bad time, but we have to pretend that we're having a good time. And I've realised that that's not true for everyone. Some people really enjoy that. Some people really love a really crowded room with a lot of people being really loud. I I don't know, I I think. I also think I could be wrong on this, but I think my not buying into the sort of mythology around New Year's Eve is probably autistic, right? That is probably a very autistic coded trait, at least to say I don't see the difference between New Year's Eve and any other night, because all we're doing is flipping the page on a calendar. It's one of those things that I that I that to me feels like a social expectation that goes unexamined, that people sort of share without exploring. And for me, it just doesn't. It doesn't make any sense to me like it's not logical. And I'm learning some of that is just autistic, lack of buying into sort of shared social constructs and stuff like that. I don't know. I don't know if that makes any sense or is helpful, but. Krysia Yeah, and Ian's response has all made me also almost made me remember actually that I find a lot of the transitions around the period quite difficult. And I think it's as a older I found them harder because when I was younger, I used to love Christmas. I was never that fussed about New Year because my parents never did any. Everything because my parents are always in bed by 9:00, regardless what day of the week is, regardless if there's a party they don't do like nights because they're both really tired and work a lot and have had caring responsibilities throughout the years. But I think certainly as I've got older and I've kind of I find the struggle of changing the kind of the mental load of, oh, we're having a new year or oh, I've got all this extra stuff to do. And this kind of when we've kind of done this Christmas stuff for we've listened to a Christmas service and we've opened presents. We've had the food. Then what do you do? And I find that kind of sitting in that awkward space really quite difficult. Whereas I guess when I was younger, I just had toys and everything was about toys and playing with stuff. And they're kind of whatever new bit I had. And we had more family around then as well. Whereas there's now a smaller amount of family, my granddad died earlier this year. Both my aunts have now died. My mum's an only child, so there's just less people around as well. So again, I think it also just feels different as well. Zoe Krysia, I think you need to buy yourself some more toys. Krysia I think I do. I mean, I do find when I got Pokémon, what was it, Pokémon was Pokémon sword and shield. It was Pokémon, the new scarlet. When I got Pokémon Scarlet, I had the best Christmas ever because I just sat and played Pokémon all day. Zoe Yeah. I think like while I don't resonate with that as like someone who isn't autistic, I get that kind of feeling of like like the transition periods. I think just having like a slightly more anxious brain. Like when the New Year comes, I see this whole like year ahead of me and all the things that I need to do within that year. And it's like, ah, especially last January, I was like, OK, and this year I've got to do all these things like submit a thesis, find a job, do this, this, this. And I think that is like, wow for some new divergent people that might be, like, more experienced to a greater extent. I think it is also like a normal start, not normal like a typical thing to be like. This is suddenly it's a new year and everyone's like going on about how it's a new year. And I know last year we did New Year's resolution episodes, but I think and that's where, like, something I've find really helpful is. Like taking some time over the holidays, just like plan my year set like even just like write down. These are the things I need to achieve and that makes me feel a bit less overwhelmed. I do. I probably talked about it before. I do like a like 12 week year 12 week year so you like split your year into like four months. So like quarters rather than like taking every month as it comes and I think I find that kind of thing helpful to like, enjoy the transition into the new Year without feeling super panicked about everything, just like breaking up into chunks. And yeah, I think that can be helpful for those of us who don't always like change or transitioning into different spaces and times and whatever else. But yeah, I don't know. I guess that kind of segues into like a question of what we do to kind of go into a new year, whether that's just like treating it like every other time or doing spreadsheets for the different things going on, yeah, I guess like how we deal with the busyness or expectations of the season. I don't know if either of you have anything else to add to those ramblings. Krysia I think Ian would have a lot to say because he's clergy! Ian I I yeah, I and and I do, yes, often have a lot to say, but yeah. No, I I love the I I actually love the start of the year for a lot of different reasons, right. You've made it through the busiest part of the year, at least for clergy, which is, you know, Advent and Christmas. There's always like this slow ramp up back into the swing of things before everything really gets busy again. In early January, my birthday's pretty early in the year. It's February 2nd, so I have that look to look forward to. It's also cold. I live somewhere that's quite hot, so having some cold weather still ahead is nice, but. You've gone past the longest night of the year, the shortest day of the year so that so you start to have more daylight and you see the light at the end of the tunnel in that regard. But it doesn't get hot right away. Right. So there's like, all sorts of reasons why for me, it's really kind of perfect. And I don't, you know, to me, it really isn't necessarily different than any other time except for the fact that it's a little. It's a little easier. It's a little smoother. It's just not as many expectations before we get back into another busy season. Right. So it's a time to sort of catch up on some things. It's a time to not feel as pressed and I don't want to sound like I'm complaining because I really love Advent and Christmas, but it's an extraordinarily busy time. And it's nice to have a a chance to slow down when the new year starts and I don't. I mean, I don't make New Year's resolutions, so I don't have that pressure on myself. I know that I'm terrible at time management, right, like just in general. So that's going to continue. And I don't suffer any delusions about that. But it's, it's just it's nice because it's not as not as overwhelming. It's just calmer. Krysia I guess for me again kind of building off of what Ian said, I always find it quite hard getting darker, especially before it changes to Greenwich mean time, UTC, whatever we have in the UK. And I find my mood really drops. And when I get to January, I know it's going to get lighter again and it's going to be really nice because I much prefer summer when it's actually the lighter evenings, because I find, especially when it's that weird kind of transition state in kind of October time. I can feel it getting dark really easily and I can feel it in my body, and so I guess in terms of dealing with it, looking forward to that really helps. I guess one of the things I'm doing this year to help deal with what I'm doing is by I'm spending a week writing an article so I'm busying myself with other stuff. I sometimes find that helps, but also doing nice things so my partner and I sometimes go to quite a few Christmas markets around our local area, which I find really nice rather than just kind of hanging around. We will physically go and do things. And last year, we went to the pantomime at the Woodville Halls as well. If I don't know if anyone knows or lives near the Woodville Halls, but it's quite a 1960s style theatre and have had kind of a pull down cinema thing and I used to go and see city there when I was really, really young because I'm from the local area I live in. But if it's very much community local panto feel and it's kind of having those things to look forward to, I find really helpful as well and I guess also just lost of rest being OK with being in your pyjamas all day being OK with. Doing what you need to if you want to go for a walk. If you want to go for a run. If you want to go swimming, if you want to just put some nice music on and just doing what's best for you because think there's so many demands from our the society that surrounds us around all the adverts. Because I noticed in November we got hit immediately with like 10 billion Grinch Christmas adverts, and it was like the 1st of November and it was a bit much just being able to kind of switch off from all that and go. I'm just going to be me in my own space and that's fine. I find that really helpful. Ian Yeah, it makes me think of something that I that I never really thought as thought of as autistic, and yet probably is. And this is part of the difficulty for me around the end of the year or any busy time really is that people have expectations. And anytime people have expectations of me, I it's really hard for me to know if I'm meeting them because a lot of the feedback I get is is implicit or is non verbal or things like that right? So anytime I mean I get nervous anytime I know there are expectations because. It's really hard to know if I'm meeting those and I don't mean that to sound woe as me. But the beauty of the start of the year is that no one has any expectations of me, right? I have at least a few days, maybe as much as a week or two before anyone expects me to to accomplish anything and that is just a really, really beautiful thing. And I'm not saying it should always be like that or anything like that, but that is a is, I think, a big part of what I love about the start of the year is just, there are no expectations. Zoe Yeah. And I guess, I mean, we're like very running out of time, but I guess it makes me think of, I don't know if anyone's familiar with Trisha Hersey's rest as resistance and I think that's so relevant for newer divergent people. I've read like one of my chapters and my PhD's on rest and fight against like when you are someone who experiences things more things can take more time and can be more tiring than other people. Rest is so important to actually say well, no, I'm going to give them. I'm not going to constantly be trying to work harder than everyone else and I talked about that in the context Bible reading and it's saying like, no, I have a right to rest. Not just because it's. That's the world we live in, but because God and Scripture sets rest aside as holy and it's a good thing. And yeah, I think like, there is something. About being a person who gets more tired with just day-to-day living and saying I'm going to take this period of rest and not feel guilty about it and not that we should only do that at Christmas and New Year, we should do that in our day-to-day life. But it is nice to have that set aside time where we can really do that and just. Refresh a bit, but yeah. Krysia Yeah. So I think that almost the Christmas period is in part to rest. But the way that a lot of the kind of these demands. That are put on us are often not from perhaps why some of us celebrate Christmas. It's all the other stuff around. Obviously people celebrate it in lots of different ways. I know people who do all sorts of different things, but it's always this very thing of you've got to buy this and you've got to go here and you've got to do this. And stripping that back and going back to what Christmas means for you. Zoe Hmm. Krysia I think is really important and that's part of that should be kind of resting either in scripture or in thought, or if you're not religious with your family, Thank you to everyone joining us today for this episode. If you have any questions, you can message us at autism theology on through BlueSky or Instagram, or you can send us an e-mail at CAT@abdn.ac.uk. Even if there's just to say hi, we'd love to hear from you.