The Truth Christmas Reveals About New Zealand

Opinion article by Stacey Shortall

For all the colour and noise that arrives each December, Christmas does something far quieter and far more honest. It shows us who we are when the pace finally eases, even briefly, and the demands of the year fall away just enough for reflection to surface.

I see this across the many parts of my life: in courtrooms and boardrooms, in community organisations, on marae, at school gates and around kitchen tables. Christmas casts a light on what people have been carrying. The conversations shift. The masks slip a little. The strain of the year, the achievements, the disappointments and the private battles all sit closer to the surface.

For many New Zealanders, this time of year is not simple. December often exposes the very things we have avoided while working through the busy months. For those who have lost someone, the absence becomes unmistakable. The empty seat, the changed routines, the small rituals that no longer make sense. Grief settles differently when everything else goes quiet. It does not ask for permission. It simply arrives.

We do not talk openly enough about this, even though it is one of the most universal experiences of the season. We rush toward celebration as if the harder parts of life will wait politely outside the door. But they do not. Loss and joy often sit side by side in December, whether or not we acknowledge them.

This is also the month when financial and social pressures peak. Families stretch budgets to meet expectations that were never realistic. Parents quietly sacrifice so their children will not feel different from their peers. Workplaces host events that many cannot afford to attend. Social media amplifies the gap, showing lavish celebrations in some homes and anxiety or restraint in others.

For many, December becomes a season of comparison rather than comfort.

In the volunteer spaces where I spend time, these pressures are not theoretical. They show up in foodbank queues that grow longer, in women’s refuges that brace for spikes in violence, in children arriving to programmes hungry or unsettled, and in communities where alcohol-fuelled tension rises sharply. Christmas itself is not the cause. It is the catalyst that intensifies what is already present.

Layered over this is the diversity of who we are as a country. Not everyone marks Christmas in the same way. Some observe it as a sacred holiday. Others experience it as cultural tradition. Many who practise different faiths, or none at all, still feel swept into a national moment that can be both unifying and isolating.

December does not treat everyone equally, but it does ask similar questions of us all. Who do I belong to? Who is missing? Who helped me through the year? Who did I help?

Leaders see this shift too. In workplaces, the end of the year reveals truths that stayed hidden through the rush. The colleague carrying private grief. The team member under financial strain. The person whose home life is more fragile than their professionalism suggests. It is the only time when the personal and the professional sit at the same table, and ignoring that reality would be a mistake.

This is why Christmas, in all its variation, is never just a holiday.

It is a measure of our social fabric.

When a family is struggling, it becomes starkly visible now. When someone is isolated, their loneliness deepens. When violence rises behind closed doors, the signs show up in the places that know where to look. The season does not create vulnerability. It reveals it.

And that revelation demands something of us.

If Christmas teaches me anything, year after year, it is that leadership in homes, communities and organisations begins with seeing what becomes visible in December. It is noticing the person who is not at the table. It is understanding that inclusion is not created by celebrating the same thing, but by ensuring no one feels invisible while others do. It is offering steadiness to those who find this season heavy, whether because of grief, finances, safety, culture or the exhaustion of having held too much for too long.

My wish this Christmas is not for more festivity. It is for more awareness.More willingness to look beyond assumptions.More recognition of the people carrying burdens quietly.More courage to step into the gaps that the season so clearly exposes.

Because here is the hopeful truth. When Christmas reveals our fractures, it also reveals our opportunities. Every act of attention, every check-in, every kindness and every moment of care has the power to reach further than we realise. Across workplaces, neighbourhoods and families, small human choices can shift outcomes in ways that policy and programmes cannot achieve on their own.

Christmas will always mean different things across New Zealand. But it can also remind us that a country is held together not by its celebrations, but by the compassion and responsibility people show when the celebrations fall away.

If we choose to notice each other more honestly this season, the hope that follows will not be seasonal. It will be structural.

And that is a future worth stepping toward.