Dreaming about
Christmas

Christmas is the one day of the year most of us can remember in detail from childhood, from the smell of the tree to the sound of wrapping paper at six in the morning. Dreaming about Christmas is usually about family, childhood and the wish to be looked after and rewarded, or about missing those things. For some people that's a warm dream, and for others it's a tense one, because Christmas is also when families spend the most time in one room.

So the reading depends on which Christmas you dreamed. A snowy morning with presents under the tree is a different dream from a dinner where everyone fights, or a Christmas spent alone in an empty flat. And the time of year matters, since a Christmas dream in December is often just your week, while one in July has something else to say.

What dreaming about Christmas means

Christmas packs a lot into one day, with family and food, gifts, religion, nostalgia and a break from work, and most Christmas dreams lean on one or two of those. Four readings come up most often.

Family, for better and for worse

Christmas is when families gather, which makes it the natural stage for dreams about them. A happy Christmas dinner often means you feel close to the people you love, or want to. A tense one (an old argument at the table, someone missing, someone who shouldn't be there) usually points to a family problem that hasn't been dealt with. There's more on that side of it on the family page.

Being a child again

For many adults Christmas is the clearest door back into childhood. Dreaming of Christmas Eve excitement, or of your childhood home decorated for it, often comes when you miss being looked after. Do you miss having nothing to organize? Or believing in something, the way you once believed in Santa?

Wanting to be rewarded

Presents are the most concrete part of Christmas, and they're about being noticed. A dream of opening gifts often comes when you've worked hard and want it recognized, by a boss, a partner or a family. But if the present was disappointing, or there wasn't one for you, ask where you feel overlooked, and by whom.

A pause at the end of the year

Christmas is also when the year stops for a few days, and a dream of it can be about the rest you need or about taking stock. If the dream was quiet (a walk in the cold, a fire, nobody needing anything), it may simply be asking for a break, or for a look back at a year you're glad to see the end of.

Dreaming about a white Christmas

Snow on Christmas morning is the picture-book version. Irving Berlin's "White Christmas", which Bing Crosby sang in the 1942 film Holiday Inn, made it the Christmas everyone dreams of, even where it almost never snows. A white Christmas dream is usually about longing for an ideal, a perfect family day, a fresh start, the calm that snow brings to a street. It can also be a little sad, because the ideal is the thing real Christmases rarely live up to.

Dreaming about Christmas presents

Receiving presents is about being seen and valued, and what the gift was can matter. Was it the thing you wanted? Something you'd wanted for years points to a hope that's finally being met, or a wish that it would be. A present you couldn't open, or one wrapped and labeled for someone else, points to recognition that's just out of reach. Giving presents in a dream is about what you offer others, and if nobody liked what you gave, you may feel your effort goes unnoticed.

Dreaming about a Christmas tree

The tree is the center of the room on Christmas Day, and in dreams it tends to stand for the family's mood. A tall, glittering tree points to warmth. A bare, fallen or dead one points to a celebration that has lost its heart, like the first Christmas after a death or a divorce, when everyone goes through the motions and nobody says what they're all thinking. Decorating a tree with someone often comes when you're building something together.

Dreaming about a Christmas dinner that goes wrong

Burnt turkey, a fight at the table and a relative storming out make up the Christmas dream many people have every December. It's usually about the pressure of making things perfect for everyone, and the fear that it will all fall apart. If you were the host, the dream is often about carrying too much. If you were a guest watching the drama, it's about a family tension you can see but can't fix.

Dreaming about Christmas alone

Spending Christmas by yourself, while everyone else is together, is a dream about loneliness and belonging. It often comes after a move, a breakup or a death, when you know the next holiday will be different. But some people dream of a solitary Christmas and feel relieved, and that usually means the real Christmas has become more duty than joy.

Dreaming about Christmas in the wrong season

A Christmas dream in the middle of summer usually has little to do with the holiday. It borrows what Christmas means to you, family gathered, being a child, the year winding down, because that's what you're missing now. And our dreams follow what's on our minds,^[1] so if Christmas plans (or Christmas money) are already worrying you in August, that's reason enough.

Dreaming about Christmas according to Jung and Freud

Christmas is the day of wishes granted and of a whole family in one room, and the two big dream theories each find something to hold on to.

Jung: the tree, the church and the child

When Jung wrote about the mother archetype he listed the symbols that stand for her, and the list includes a church, a tree and an oven.^[4] Christmas puts all three into one day, with the tree in the middle of the room, the service on Christmas Eve and the turkey in the oven. He wrote nothing about Christmas, so this is our application, but a dream where the tree or the kitchen was the heart of the scene may be about the mother figure in your family and how safe or smothering she felt.

He wrote about the child as an archetype too, a figure that stands for what's coming, a new beginning still small and vulnerable.^[4] Read through that idea, a Christmas dream with a baby or a child at its center can be about something new in your life that you want to protect.

Freud: the present with your name on it

For Freud a dream gave a wish what it was after,^[5] and Christmas morning is the one scene in the calendar where wishes are handed over wrapped. A present with your name on it is that wish, ready made. Applied to a Christmas dream (he didn't write about the holiday), a gift that was wrong, or an empty space under the tree where yours should be, shows the wish refused instead. He'd have asked whose attention you were hoping to get.

The biblical and spiritual meaning of Christmas in dreams

Christian tradition ties Christmas to dreams more closely than most people remember.

Dreams in the Christmas story

The Gospel of Matthew tells the Christmas story partly through dreams, four of them in two chapters. First an angel comes to Joseph while he sleeps and tells him to marry Mary.^[2] After the birth, a dream warns the wise men not to go back to Herod, and another sends Joseph and the child to Egypt.^[3] In that tradition, a dream at Christmas is something to listen to, which is a good habit whatever you believe.

Questions to ask about your Christmas dream

Every family's Christmas is its own, so the details only you know count most.

• Whose Christmas was it: your childhood one, your current one, or a stranger's?
• Who was at the table, and who was missing?
• Did you give or receive, and how did it feel?
• Was it warm, tense, lonely or perfect?
• What do you miss right now that Christmas stands for?

Oniri asks about the people and the feeling before it reads your dream, which matters for a day this loaded.