In modern times, today is also Divorce Day. Couples who vowed to just 'get through the holidays' split up the Monday after the weekend after New Year's Day. For Divorce Lawyers, Revenue Christmas commences when they return to the office on this day in 2026.
Except Divorce Day being the first Monday after New Year'd Eve is not that modern. Though our modern Christmas is very much a 19th century tradition via Charles Dickens, people were getting divorced or separating on this day for hundreds of years prior to that.
They look so happy. I give it 10 years. She'll put on weight and he'll start wearing cargo shorts in public. Credit: Shutterstock.
In medieval times, there was a church court and it had the power to dissolve and enforce marriage. Records from as far back as the 1300s show that over 30% of marriage cases were initiated in January. It was really easy to get married, you didn't need big government or a priest, it is why common law marriages still exist today, but divorce did not exist and getting an annulment was challenging.(3) The church handled that and you'd better have a great reason. No 'I was disappointed in my Christmas gift' rationales, a priest needed clear evidence before a split was granted.
It wasn't just the Church Year, the end of Christmas, involved in the timing, it was also the Agricultural Year. Harvesting months had lots of activity and even though church courts were open in November, no filings occurred; preparing for winter took priority. Then there was Christmas.
So though old artwork shows people engaged in repairs - it is how "mending fences" became a part of the Christmas family lexicon - in just as many cases as now they were counting the days until they could break free of the pasture.
You may not have seen the signs, but science did
You may be shocked if it happens to you, the signs 'were not there', but scholars have found hints in word association tests - they were able to correlate results to how soon couples split. Some people also don't know how unhappy they are until they know it - and they may change a lot when they realize it. Some simply have unrealistic expectations due to media portrayals. Relationships are not a romantic comedy.
Some people just didn't want to be alone during the holidays. You were just a holidate. So if you got sex out of the deal, you should consider it a bonus.
Who's likely to last?
'Opposites attract' is fine for magnets but in the world of relationships it is only beneficial if both have a partner-focused mentaltiy. Those couples have the highest chance of staying together and being happy over time because they are just more conscientious. Dramatic daters are twice likely to split up, because they focus on the negatives and those all compound. The authors of an analysis predicting what four archetypes are likely to break up use an analogy that if you need new tires and then a new starter, you may think the car is bad, when it really just needs maintained. Yet their Stay-Leave Ambivalence may tilt to Leave when they turn over a new leaf about dieting. If he gets back down to dating weight, it may be a sign he is ready to start dating; someone else.
You may be concerned that the other person moved on easily and that means they never cared. It might be true, but evolutionary psychologists contend we are hardwired to get over breakups so it may be just be a cultural mandate.
It may not be a real effect
Nurses will swear that crazy behavior goes up sharply during a full moon but an objective analysis doesn't show it. The same may be true for divorce lawyers who believe they get Revenue Christmas starting today.
Actual divorce filings show instead the largest quantifiable spikes are in March and August, not January. Ignoring the sociologists invoking "domestic ritual" and "symbolically charged" mumbo-jumbo, data show that rather than being a post-Christmas phenomenon people got divorced after a family vacation but before kids went back to school. March may be because of Spring Break. Obviously, if your husband went to Spring Break, you have a problem. If your wife went to Spring Break, she wants to relive her Woo Girl glory days and there is nothing you can do about that except find someone new.
Hopefully, most of you will just enjoy not having to hear Mariah Carey for the next 11 months.
NOTES:
(1) Which to some marks the beginning of Carnival, which will end with Mardi Gras. Isrealites have hundreds of commandments but Christians have even more ways to party.
(2) This would only be about 300 miles using CPCs (Camel Personnel Carriers) but they likely took a lot longer and arrived from much farther given the gifts, and since Joseph and Mary were in a house when they arrived. Unless the Greeks got the 'no room at the inn' part wrong in their translation and it wasn't an inn at all, it was a family home with a separate area in the barn, and the family who had gotten there before them had moved out of the main house and went home. Which is how the Magi found them in a house, rather than arriving a month or more later when the census was concluded, meaning lots of places had rooms available again.
It can be confusing because the New Testament we have was written in Greek, and rather poor Greek at that, and modern translations only made it more confusing.
(3) It is why there is an Anglican Church today. When the Pope sent a 'What? Again" reply to King Henry VIII after another annulment request, the English monarch made his own church and himself the head of it. To Americans, it would be strange if the President had to certify an Archbishop in Wisconsin but that's still a thing in England - luckily, beheaded wives are not.
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