Last Christmas Eve, at 6pm, I turned off the music system playing Mariah’s All I Want For Christmas Is You, pulled on my coat and locked the door to the high-end beauty store I managed.
It was dark and cold, and while I’d rung the till on the last customer at 5pm, six colleagues and I had spent another hour frantically taking down seasonal displays and preparing for the sales.
I’d worked flat out since Black Friday — the November sales event — and as I began the 40-minute walk to my home in Kent, which I share with my partner Dave, 43, exhaustion overwhelmed me.
It was gone 7pm when I eventually got in and, after a glass of Sauvignon, I went straight to bed.
On Christmas Day I was too tired to enjoy the festivities — and then I was back to work on Boxing Day.
Having worked every Boxing Day for the last 20 years, Samantha Walsh, 47, handed in her notice at the end of October and has no regrets
It’s been like this for decades. Having gone straight into employment instead of university, at almost 48 I’ve now worked in retail for 30 years, 25 of them at management level.
As anyone who’s worked in a shop in December will know, it’s very hard. But there’s a reason why it’s been particularly unrelenting for me: I don’t have children. And there is an expectation that women like me will pick up the slack so the mums can have time off with their families.
A third of my team were mums and, as much as it pains me to say it, mums can be unreliable. When their child is ill they get to take parental leave — that’s the law.
But I’m the one who has to cover their work, and there are times it’s hard to be around them when this is happening repeatedly.
We support working parents, but not childless colleagues
This autumn, as another brutal Christmas approached, I realised I just wasn’t prepared to take the strain through yet another festive season. So, in October, I handed in my notice.
Some will argue that I was rash to throw away a good career. My store was doing really well and I was hitting all my targets.
But it wasn’t just Christmas; I’d become disillusioned by the disparity between the monumental effort I consistently ploughed into my career as a woman without children and the lack of recognition and reward I received in return.
As a society we support working parents, but the same kind of support is not offered to those like me. My dad is ill, but I knew I wouldn’t have been granted any time off in the run-up to Christmas, paid or otherwise.
Legally, you can get leave to deal with an emergency involving a child, grandchild, partner or parent — but they have to be a ‘dependant’ of yours, and rely on you for their care. As my dad doesn’t live with me, I wouldn’t qualify for time off to help him.
The decision not to have children wasn’t mine, either. I married in my late 20s and my former husband and I tried, and failed, to have a child before being accepted for NHS fertility treatment when I was in my early 30s.
Samantha believes that she was expected, as a childless woman, to pick up the slack so the mums could have time off with their families over the festive period
It turned out I couldn’t conceive naturally because my fallopian tubes were blocked by scar tissue from a previous procedure.
Yet we were so sure it would happen eventually that we bought a four-bedroom house in anticipation of the children we’d fill it with. But after three futile rounds of fertility treatment we decided to stop. Each failure was a knife to the heart. Little wonder we split 18 months later.
In fact, fertility treatment with my own eggs was never going to work because, I learned soon after, I was going through early menopause.
I am proud of the way I have managed to rebuild my life and found love again. But, of course, there are times, such as Christmas, when the absence of my own children is particularly keenly felt — especially when social media is full of photos of families in festive pyjama sets and personalised stockings over the fireplace.
Still, as I approach 50, I want to pat myself on the back for getting this far and embracing what I do have rather than what I don’t. Which is why I’ve had enough.
It pains me to say, but staff with kids can be unreliable
Mums often work part-time, meaning it’s understandable there is less loyalty to the team. If they or their children were ill, some of the mums I worked with had no hesitation about phoning in sick, usually with no notice.
There were many times when I’d felt obliged to postpone my time off or miss long-anticipated celebrations to fill in. Or on my days off I’d be only half-present with my partner as I was firefighting staffing issues. I even had mums phoning in sick to me while I was on the beach on holiday.
I understand — what else can parents do? That’s why I want to encourage our society, business bosses and parents to think about their childless colleagues and how to support us, too.
It doesn’t help that since the pandemic, I’ve noticed ‘sickness’ has gone through the roof. Lockdown seemed to make ‘going into work’ appear optional.
In theory, I got two non-consecutive days off a week. But having to cover for a mum at the last minute meant I’d frequently feel burnt out. I struggled with insomnia and anxiety. It got so bad I was prescribed antidepressants.
Samantha, who has worked at management level in retail for 25 years, often felt obliged to postpone her time off to fill in for mums who called in sick with little or no notice
Then there was the inevitable uptick in sickness when the schools broke up in mid-December. And that’s before we come to the thorny subject of who gets Christmas week off.
Parents shouldn’t get priority, but inevitably they do — or they simply phone in sick if you put them on the rota. Without wanting to sound like a martyr, I’ve worked every Boxing Day for the last 20 years.
While mums point out they have family commitments, they forget I have them, too: I’m a daughter and an aunt.
I’m close to my parents, both in their 70s, and I want to be able to spend quality time with them. I want to be the one cooking for them. I don’t want them worrying about me (and I know they do) when they see me on Christmas afternoon, exhausted and asleep on their sofa.
I want to spend time with my nine-year-old nephew, too.
I’ve worked every Boxing Day for 20 years
One year an ex invited me to his mum’s rather posh home for Christmas Day. I sat down on her lovely white sofa with a glass of wine. . . and before I knew it, I’d fallen asleep, missing the meal.
People say it’s only a day, but when you’re working round the clock in the run-up to the 25th, and then have to go in full steam for the Boxing Day sales, it doesn’t seem fair that I don’t ever get to enjoy the Christmas magic.
When I told my managers that I was resigning, I didn’t feel a sliver of regret; rather, it was exhilarating and freeing. The thought of yet another manic Christmas in retail filled me with dread.
I used to love the build-up to Christmas as a child. Unfortunately the more years you work in retail, the less you enjoy the season. You can’t help but notice that it brings out the worst in people, whether it’s customers or staff.
Having locked up for the last time at the end of October, I have no regrets. I’ve been able to stop the antidepressants, my mental health is in a very good place and physical aches and pains seem to have disappeared.
Since leaving her job, Samantha has been able to stop taking antidepressants. Her mental health has improved while physical aches and pains have disappeared
I haven’t worked since and it is only possible because I’ve been saving £500 a month since the pandemic, building up a nice little nest egg. Childless women need to be prudent like this because there isn’t any equivalent to paid maternity leave for us.
This Christmas I’m reaping the rewards of my hard work. I had time to decorate my tree — something I never previously got to do.
After proper quality time with my family this year, when everyone goes back to work in January, I will be on a flight to Thailand with my partner Dave, and we’ll spend two weeks island-hopping in the sunshine.
Meanwhile, I don’t know what my career looks like next year, but having the time to think about it has given me a new lease of life.
Six years ago I started a Facebook group for non-mums which is also on Instagram (thenonmumnetwork), and am launching a website for childless and child-free women like me by the same name.
This is what I want my legacy to be: providing support to, and campaigning for equality for, non-mums.
So many of us end up saying nothing, while quietly taking on the challenging side of Christmas when other women don’t want to work. Well, no more.
- As told to Samantha Brick
James Parker is a UK-based entertainment aficionado who delves into the glitz and glamour of the entertainment industry. From Hollywood to the West End, he offers readers an insider’s perspective on the world of movies, music, and pop culture.
