On The Bright Side, Maybe There Will Be More Christmas Sex This Year?
If you’ve ever visited your partner’s family over the Christmas holiday and stayed at their home as part of the bargain, you may have found yourself presented with the following dilemma: You desire to have Christmas sex, but that desire is paired with the feeling that it might be a little rude to dirty the sheets in the guest room — or dangerous to wake up your father-in-law with grunts and moans, possibly leading him to believe there are intruders in the house and that he needs to grab his shotgun and burst into the living room to confront a burglar, or possibly a suddenly-quite-frightened Santa.
In the early years of their marriage, Calico and her husband endured several sexless Christmas seasons, refraining from amorous entanglements for the sake of family harmony — or to assure a lack of family gunplay, at least.
As it turns out, sexual activity declines for many couples around Christmas, for a wide variety of reasons, very few of which involve fear of being shot by their paranoid and well-armed hosts. It makes sense, really — Christmas can be stressful, busy and crowded, none of which are particularly conducive to having sex, unless you’re really into tense group sex, or something.
This year, Christmas won’t be the same in other years, of course. With less travel, smaller and fewer family gatherings, Calico wonders aloud in her latest post: “On The Bright Side, Maybe There Will Be More Christmas Sex This Year?”
by Calico Rudasill, Sssh.com Christmas Porn For Women and Couples
Read On…
One Christmas, when visiting my in-laws, my husband and I were trying hard not to have sex in my mother-in-law’s house for the duration of our stay. Really, we were.
By the third night of our visit, however, we were both so stressed out by family politics, scrutiny of our then-new marriage by various relatives on his side of the ledger and the general lack of a moment’s peace that we needed to have sex, just to release some tension and sooth our frayed nerves.
What ensued was an awkward attempt to have the quietest sex on record, a not-so-erotic effort to avoid bed springs squeaking, moans and squeaks and grunts of pleasure, or the headboard bouncing against the wall.
Technically, we did have sex. True, it wasn’t particularly satisfying for either of us and only increased our stress level by making us yearn for the comforts and privacy of home, but ‘sex’ it was. It also turned out to be the only time we pulled that move while staying at his parents’ house during Christmas, which we’ve done seven more times since.
Yule Tide = Low Tide for Sex
These days, we approach our Christmas trips differently, having adopted a savvy approach that was, to be honest, simply financially out of our reach back when we first got married: We stay in a hotel, wherein we screw to our hearts’ content – neighboring hotel residents be damned!
This has almost entirely solved our Christmas-travel/sex dilemma, other than those spontaneous moments when we’d quite like to have sex but also feel like it would be rude to do so, right there in the living room whilst everyone else unwraps their gifts.
As it turns out, we’re far from the only couple to have confronted a sexless (or less-sex, anyway) Christmas. Evidently, research shows that many people have less sex at Christmas, despite other holidays (and weekends, generally) being peak times for sexual activity.
Remarking on how weekends and holidays tend to see an increase in sex, Micaela Martinez from Columbia University notes the data “suggests that having leisure time with your intimate partner facilitates sex.”
I’m not sure we needed a study to understand that, quite frankly, although I suppose my husband and I have on many occasions crammed a quickie into the schedule when we didn’t exactly have “leisure time” at our disposal, so maybe the conclusion isn’t as obvious as it seems at first blush.
Not Now Honey; I’m Making a Disgusting Fruitcake
The various reasons people have sex less often around Christmas are all fairly intuitive, as well.
“Christmas carries a lot of work, and expectations, with it: from organizing and wrapping presents, to making the home look different and special, to preparing special foods and perhaps doing Christmas cards,” said Dr. Kate Boyer of Cardiff University. “In most families there isn’t someone at home who can make this ‘holiday work’ their priority, so it ends up getting squeezed in around jobs and childcare. It just isn’t a recipe for feeling sexy.”
I’ll add to that my more personal observation that having your husband’s uncle slamming quarts of spiked eggnog and drunkenly telling stories about the worst accidents and wounds he witnessed during his years as a paramedic, in positively gruesome detail, isn’t exactly a turn-on, either.
A COVID Christmas Silver Lining?
This year, of course, those who are inclined to follow the advice of public health officials largely won’t be traveling to visit family this Christmas, or will be taking a very different approach to their gatherings, if they do.
This makes me wonder: Will those of us who eschew Christmas sex due to its family/logistical challenges find ourselves having more sex this Christmas than usual? Speaking for myself, I intend to declare that we WILL be having more sex than usual this Christmas, and to make it a self-fulfilling prophesy of sorts by initiating sex several times daily from Christmas Day right through New Year’s Day – and what the hell, why not, maybe even right through Martin Luther King Day, Valentine’s Day, Mardi Gras and the start of Daylight Saving in March.
I’m drawing the line at St. Patrick’s Day, though; he’ll be too drunk – and at that point, liable to start retelling his uncle’s stories.
Happy Holidays from the crew at Sssh.com and Wasteland.com