In my 24 years, yesterday was the first Christmas I’d ever spent on my own. I’d always had family or friends around, if not both; and I guess a part of me always took it for granted that it would be the case year on year.

I feared I would be terribly lonely this year, what with London shut down around me, trapped indoors with nowhere to go, no one to talk to. And I’m not going to sugarcoat it all and claim that it wasn’t actually lonely at all, that it was perfectly fine, that at no point did I fleetingly wish someone else was around. But you know – with the texts that I started getting on Christmas Eve, and my mom’s phone call in the morning, and the emails/Facebook messages that trickled in – I didn’t really have all that much time, or inclination, to feel sorry for myself.

I had a blissfully warm lie-in after hanging up with my mom, and after finally (reluctantly) rolling out of bed around 10:30, put on my Spotify Christmas playlist and started the day with “All I Want for Christmas is You”, which is probably still my favourite Christmas song – if only, in large part, thanks to Love Actually. It was cold, but not the frightful, bone-chilling frost of the cold snap that had ravaged England and the continent for the past week; instead it was more of a calm, settled crisp cold. Listening to Mariah, I couldn’t help smiling to myself and singing along as I made my morning coffee. Oh I won’t ask for much this Christmas, I won’t even wish for snow – how true, that.

So the day passed uneventfully and in supremely restful manner. I threw myself gleefully into playing more of Dragon Age (woefully behind many of my friends, I think, because I don’t usually have time or energy to play after work!) and watched The Muppet Christmas Carol for the first time. Christmas movies at Christmastime are something of a tradition; had we all been home together, I would probably have been watching Home Alone 2 with my siblings. But this year we are all scattered across continents: my sister and brother in Singapore, my mom and dad in Sydney and headed to the Blue Mountains for a 3-day outdoorsy walking holiday, and me here in winter with my endless mugs of hot tea and honey.

This morning, I woke late revelling in the fact that I was not caught up in a crazy Boxing Day sale crowd, and put on some unabashedly cheesy 80s pop to twirl round my room to, starting with Bananarama’s “Love in the First Degree”. It’s been a good holiday season, so far. I miss people – but then again, when have I not? And as for being on my own, it was far less devastatingly depressing than I had been led to believe, for the most part. I felt warm, and I felt loved, and what more could I want at Christmastime?