12/24/2025
Can anyone else relate? Happy holidays everyone!
Christmas. That overwhelming time of year where happiness is expected, joy is rammed down your throat, and peace and love is preached but increasingly hard to perform when faced with multiple consecutive days socialising with people you actively avoid for the other 11 months of the year.
But fear not. If you have horses, you are ready.
First up: the big Christmas shop.
An endurance test where no one obeys the sacred left-to-left rule, trolleys appear from nowhere, and spatial awareness is apparently optional. Luckily, years of riding schools, clinics, and unaffiliated shows have honed your collision-avoidance instincts to elite levels. You can weave through chaos like a Grand Prix rider on a hot warmblood.
And that person who “just needs to squeeze in” ahead of the increasingly furious queue? Fine. You’re conditioned. You’ve smiled politely while that professional jumps the drawn order. Multiple times. You feel nothing now.
Next: the wrapping.
Child’s play. At least Christmas presents don’t suddenly start moving halfway through bandaging. There’s no gale-force wind launching wrapping paper back into your face, and there’s no active threat of being booted in the face. If you’ve poulticed this year, congratulations — you’re now essentially a professional. You can even add ribbon.
Then comes Christmas dinner.
Easy. Multitasking is second nature when one horse is on GastroGard and sucralfate, two are on bute, and the rest have a supplement list longer than your arm. Three feeds to soak, all with different timings, and none of them allowed to be wrong. Roast potatoes don’t stand a chance. And at least everyone will eat it without having to syringe it or cover it in molasses. Hopefully.
Finally: the enforced socialising.
Dodging comments about your weight, relationship status, career, or general disappointment-to-the-family brand is effortless. You survived livery yard politics all year without being dragged into drama — even when Camildred removed her horse at 2am because her husband Jimothy had been making eyes at the new groom. (We absolutely won’t mention that.) You even managed to say “well done” — through clenched teeth — when Tarquinita beat you at the local show (we will ignore the rumours she paid off the judge).
And if all else fails? The ultimate escape clause. Horses. A universally accepted emergency excuse. No one questions a perfectly timed, “Oh no, the horses are out.” Even if you were the one who definitely, absolutely, left the gate open in the first place.
Merry Christmas. You’ll survive.
You’ve handled worse — and it tried to bite you.
