As I woke up this morning, aside from the usual ailments of gas, grogginess and the brief confusion of what day it is, there was also a sense of elation. It got slightly stronger as I queued to pay for the weekly tube card and then, as I stood across from the Victoria and Albert Museum, it finally hit struck me as to why.

It felt so good to be back in the rhythm of the weekly fight against evil and chaos that some would also mistake for the dreary tedium of work.

But why?

This flies in the face of how everyone is supposed to feel after the Christmas time, filled with cheer, beer and far too many pies of various flavours, as mostly you’re supposed to be depressed about having to return to work after a break, well if you did get one of course. So surely there has to be a reason as to why this madness descended upon my very being.

Imagine your life is the Starship Enterprise, and you of course are the bald headed captain of the fine crew aboard. You’re flying through space at warp speed, where you are saving the universe against unpaid bills, take selfies of yourself eating something from the food replicator, chatting up sexy aliens, and wondering why there is only two toilets on the whole ship.

Santa’s Elves are going to make you suffer Picard….

You’re having a Skype chat on the big telly on the Bridge to one of the aforementioned sexy aliens, when all of a sudden, you start experiencing interference and then lose signal altogether.

Annoyed at losing the chance to get it on, you bellow orders. Your science officer can’t explain what the cause is, but then you’re fired on. Shot after shot pounds the hull until the engines are hit and you drop back down to a speed slower than a snail in a coma. The ship is being pounded again and again, but you can’t identify what’s doing it.

Then it shows up and your lower lip quivers. You instruct the crew to brace for further impact as you are powerless. On screen, is a giant sled of death, firing ho ho ho missiles at you, and communications get hacked to endlessly play “I wish it could be Christmas Every Day” by Wizard.

Christmas was coming to get you and there is nothing you can do.

It sounds an awful way to describe a joyful time of year for many others, and there will be nowhere near the same number of people who would ever agree with this sentiment. I agree, it sounds like sour sprouts. And in many ways, selfish. After all, this is the time of year you’re supposed to think of others.

But recently the overwhelming feelings I couldn’t escape was that Christmas is the time of year that you drop everything that you were in the middle of doing, and then either pack your bags full of the gifts you hoped people like to go across the country or in some cases, the world and then spend time with those who basically you don’t really see the rest of the year.

Should I stay or should I go?

Or you stay perfectly still where you are and it’s the turn of everyone else to turn up and ruin the carpet with a combination of sprouts and the sauce that normally gets poured over prawns to make them taste nice.

Either way, there will be a big commitment on your part, no matter what role you have to play in the whole affair.

If you’re spending time with the family, you find yourself struggling after two days to continue to make small talk and then you start getting antsy about when you can go back to flying round the galaxy again, chatting up that last alien hottie.

If you’re by yourself, you would probably start going nuts about having no-one around, mainly as everyone else has gone somewhere to be with their family and / or various lovers and then seeing who would be available to come round and show you how to cook Paxo stuffing mix using a toaster.

No….really….you shouldn’t use the same joke as you did on Christmas day again…..That’s just lazy….f**ker.

Hell, what if you can’t really enjoy christmas because of the past, and year after year you get reminded of the bad times which occurred because some loose memory when a song plays goes off and you just lose the cheer for a moment before getting back into the Christmas spirit. Mainly by drinking some with some tonic water.

It seems that in one way or another, there is a toll taken, whether it’s just financial, or mental where you again make the time to hear the same story for the 17th time that hour and this leads onto what January has become more significant in some ways.

It’s the recovery for yourself from Christmas when the starship Enter-Life has been repaired and you limp onwards home with smoke coming from the exhaust for a short time before getting back up to Warp Speed (hey we’ve got to keep the sci-fi metaphor going, haven’t we?).

But before the internet trolls come storming in, lets remember that it’s not all doom and gloom, nor should it be.

In many ways, the holiday time for many will always be the time where they can kick back, relax and reflect on a year well spent, and see smiling faces and spend quality time with those they cherish above all. The one time everyone can actually get together to see people they wish they could see more often and forge memories which will be with them forever. It is nothing short of a blessing.

But for some, the “most wonderful time of the year” can also be heartbreaking, punishing and in some ways, perhaps cruel and no amount of sentiment may change that.