Challenging OCD on Christmas Eve

A night without usual fears allows faith to be reclaimed.

Paula Duncan

Paula Duncan is a PhD candidate at the University of Aberdeen, researching OCD and faith.

A nocturnal snow-covered scene of a tree, chapel and Christmas tree casting shadows.

A chapel in Krün Germany.

Andreas Kretschmer on Unsplash.

The display on my car tells me that it’s just gone 11pm on Christmas Eve, and the temperature is below freezing. It’s the sort of cold that catches your breath the minute you step outside. The trees are glittering with frost. The stars are sharp and clear in the sky. Everything feels still and clean. In the carpark, I can hear the muffled notes of the organ playing familiar Christmas carols. People in Christmas jumpers are trickling in through the main church door. I can see Santa hats, some reindeer antler headbands; some kids have woolly hats tugged down over their ears. I haven’t been to a Christmas Eve service since I was a child.

I take a deep breath and try to let go of some of the anxiety about being here. My Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder doesn’t take a break for the festive season. I have previously written about my experience with OCD: the way that it impacts my experience of faith and how it makes going to church feel difficult. I find it a challenge to sit with the doubt and uncertainty of not being 100 per cent sure that I believe in God but badly wanting to. I struggle with not knowing what verses of the Bible will be read and how I will feel. I worry about something sparking my OCD and then being held hostage by my own intrusive thoughts. This always feels worse when I’m tired, too. I am far more likely to engage with the intrusive thoughts my OCD offers up when I’m not well rested. But I’m here. Despite feeling nervous, I am happy to be here. The warm glow of the light inside the church is welcoming and the low hum of happy voices feels reassuring as everyone discusses their Christmas plans.

There is a flurry of chatter as we are all invited to wish one another a ‘merry Christmas!’ and then we fall into a restless and expectant silence as Christmas day begins.

I don’t have the usual fear of the unknown today. We are here for the carols and the watchnight service – eagerly awaiting midnight and the dawn of Christmas Day. I might not know exactly what the structure of the service will be, but I can almost guarantee that the reading will begin with words from the Gospel of Luke. We’ll be told of the census of the Roman world, and we’ll hear that Mary and Joseph would have to travel to Bethlehem. There will be no room in the inn. The baby Jesus will be born, and laid in a manger.

This story is one that I heard at childhood Christingle services. It’s the one that we were told every year in primary school with abundant colourful crafts to help us to remember the key points. I’m reminded of nativity plays – watching them and being part of them, and the slightly off-key renditions of ‘Away in a Manger’. I remember doing the reading as a Girl Guide – nervously practicing beforehand to make sure that I could pronounce all the words correctly. I remember being proud of myself for standing up and reading at all.

Armed with those memories as I cross the carpark, I know there is going to be nothing unexpected in the Christmas Eve service. My OCD still finds ways to make its presence known – I insist that I get to sit at the end of a row because that’s where I feel most comfortable. I read the order of service a few times to check that everything there is as I expect. I make some concessions to anxiety for the sake of being able to turn up at all. But I am here, and I feel safe.

The readings are exactly as I expected. I know all of the Christmas carols that we sing. At midnight, there is a flurry of chatter as we are all invited to wish one another a ‘merry Christmas!’ and then we fall into a restless and expectant silence as Christmas day begins and we wait for the minister to say a few words about what this means. I am with my family and there are familiar faces in the congregation – people I know from various places. It’s nice knowing that we are all here for the same reason and with the same intention.

There are many cheerful Christmas wishes as we leave the church and I’m proud of myself for being here. Maybe my faith is something I can reclaim from my OCD eventually, however slowly. For now, I look up to the sky as we head back out into the carpark and smile at the stars twinkling down at us. I feel perfectly fine.

Since that year, lockdown excluded, my family have been to the watchnight or the Christingle services most years. As a theology student, I sometimes feel a little self-conscious about how infrequently I go to church. I sometimes joke about being a Christmas Christian in terms of my church attendance and certainly in how I engage with the Bible. I like to read a little on Christmas day and I love watching the televised service on the BBC on Christmas morning. It’s the time of year where I am perhaps most active in my engagement with my faith. I look forward to going to the Christmas Eve church services now. It’s the one time where I don’t have to battle with anxiety about going to church and know that plenty of other people are here as infrequently as I am. My OCD comes along with me, certainly, but I feel safe to be here just as I am.

Article

Comment

Conspiracy theory

Freedom

Justice

6 February 2025

4 min read

Why free speech might just need a crime of passion defence

Horrific crimes against our humanity tell us we must protect our freedoms, not constrict them.

George Pitcher

George is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and an Anglican priest.

A protester stands with back to the camera, his baseball hat is turned backwards, it reads 'freedom'.

Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash.

One of the silliest legal defences ever must be the “crime of passion”. Or crime passionnel, as the French knew it for centuries, which should really appear on a menu as one of those haute cuisine desserts they so adore, featuring poached passion fruits in Chantilly sauce: “Non, garcon, tenez-vous la Crepe Suzette. Aujourd’hui je voudrai la crème passionel, s’il vous plait. Et vite – ma femme arrive bientot.” *

But to digress in a first paragraph is a crime journalaise, which incidentally is a piece of Franglais that should apply to everything in Le Figaro. So back to crimes of passion. The idea was that an act of spousal infidelity could arouse such a passionate rage that the romantic interloper deserved what they got. First-degree murder could be downgraded to manslaughter, because obviously there can be no malice aforethought in the heats of passion.

The crime of passion’s bastard offspring is the “gay panic defense”. Note the tell-tale “s” there (though, breathtakingly, interpretations of this defence remain available in both the UK and the US). It runs that a defendant may allege to have found a same-sex sexual advance so offensive or frightening that they were provoked into murdering or otherwise injuring their alleged seducer. Victim-blaming or what?

Anyway, we might want to dust off crime of passion defences because a leaked report from the Home Office suggests that the definition of extremism in law could be extended to cover “extreme misogyny”, “environmental extremism”, “left-wing, anarchist and single-issue extremism” (it even has its own acronym, LASI) and “conspiracy theories”.

Now, I’m all for catching misogyny before anyone gets hurt, but all these things are covered by existing laws. And some of them are just plain bonkers. Were I to be charged with holding an extremist environmental opinion or an extreme left-wing, anarchist or single-issue view, I think I’d want to say that it was a crime of passion.

By which I would mean that there was no malice aforethought because I was acting in the heats of passion for my cause at a time when my balance of mind was impaired. Otherwise, I could get nicked for simply thinking or saying something. Sticks and stones and all that.

But horrific crimes against our humanity tell us we must protect and defend our freedoms, not constrict them. We want to prevent murders, not the saying or thinking of both silly and vile things.

To adopt Serious Face for a moment, I’m aware that hate crimes are a very big thing indeed. How could it be otherwise when we’ve just commemorated Holocaust Memorial Day. And we’ve also the other week had the sentencing of someone – I wouldn’t even spellcheck his name – for the murder of three little girls in Southport.

But horrific crimes against our humanity tell us we must protect and defend our freedoms, not constrict them. We want to prevent murders, not the saying or thinking of both silly and vile things. Our concentration should be on that prevention, not the forbidding of attitudes that might (but probably won’t in the vast majority of cases) lead to a violent crime.

Don’t get me started on Non-Crime Hate Incidents (NCHIs). Oh, you just did. Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson was visited by police last Remembrance Sunday and, surprisingly for someone who has built a career on telling snowflakes to grow a spine, came over all oppressed and persecuted. They were following up a photo she’d posted, claiming it was of Metropolitan Police posing with what she called “Jew-haters” at a London rally in support of Palestine.

In reality, the photo was taken in Manchester and featured Pakistanis, not Palestinians. There was a clue in their flag having “Pakistan” written on it. But that makes her not a very good journalist. Not a bad, far less a criminal, person.

A saying usually ascribed to St Augustine, in one of his letters, is that we are to “hate the sin and love the sinner”. Similarly, we must try to hate the crime, but love the criminal. That must remain humanly impossible for the crimes already mentioned in this column. (Though, astonishingly, history records some Jews finding it in their hearts to forgive their Nazi persecutors).

But we acknowledge that this is where the gospel bar is set. We’re to love our enemies, even if we don’t like them and we condemn their actions. In practice, that means preventing crime in law and holding perpetrators to justice. What it does not mean is going after people who say hateful and stupid things, while other people are actually doing hateful things. The former may and should be about sound intelligence gathering; the latter is effective policing.

This principle is rooted in our culture, founded on the golden rule of loving our enemies and our neighbours as ourselves. There’s always room for forgiveness as well as justice, as crimes of passion demonstrate.

And if that sounds recklessly self-sacrificial, we might look at the Passion of Christ and the crimes of passion that were committed during it. As he said himself, tout est accompli.

* "No, boy, hold the Crêpe Suzette. Today I would like the passion cream, please. And quickly – my wife is coming soon."

Join with us - Behind the Seen

Seen & Unseen is free for everyone and is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you’re enjoying Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?

Alongside other benefits (book discounts etc.), you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing what I’m reading and my reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

Graham Tomlin

Editor-in-Chief

Find out more and sign up