Columnist Leah McFall has a message for anyone already dreading December: start saying no now. In a piece published by the NZ Herald on 7 November 2026, the writer argues that November, not December, is the month to guard your calendar, refuse extra responsibilities and quietly step back from the seasonal rat race before it swallows you whole.
McFall calls it putting the “no” in November. The idea is simple. Between the first of the month and Christmas Eve, you take on nothing new, protect your energy and let the obligations that normally pile up simply pass you by. It is a small act of resistance against a season that has quietly turned into a second job.
What putting the “no” in November actually means
According to the NZ Herald column, the practice means declining everything from hosting the book club to washing a team's worth of cricket whites. McFall's advice is blunt about the school carol service too: if nobody is taking names at the door, quietly skip it. Her argument is not anti-Christmas or anti-community. It is a case for protecting the sanity and relationships that the season is supposedly about.
She is not alone in thinking this way. Similar experiments in boundary-setting are circulating among writers online, including a Substack essay on how to put the “no” in November, which frames the month as a pre-emptive strike against December burnout. The instinct clearly resonates far beyond one columnist's living room.
The timing matters. McFall notes that by early November, Mariah Carey's “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is already back on supermarket playlists, a song she drily observes has been generating royalties for 32 years. When the commercial machine starts spinning that early, she suggests, the people inside it need a head start on self-defence.
The politics of a tiny Christmas
There is something quietly radical in McFall's framing, and it fits a wider conversation New Zealanders are having about consumption, burnout and what the holidays are actually for. For decades the season has been measured in volume: more gifts, more gatherings, more food, more hosting. The environmental cost of that excess, from wasted food to landfill-bound wrapping, is well documented. The human cost is less often counted.
McFall counts it. She describes years of meticulous shopping, wrapping and hiding gifts around the house, tracking her children's growing cunning from the knicker drawer to the boot of the car to, finally, the airing cupboard, where gifts folded into laundry piles sit safe because teenagers never look at laundry. Her husband, by contrast, panic shops on Christmas Eve, which is how she came to own a duck-shaped wine decanter, an object she hated on sight and now would rescue from a kitchen fire.
The comedy is the vehicle, but the argument underneath is serious. The pressure to perform a perfect Christmas falls disproportionately on the people, often women, who do the invisible logistics. Saying no in November is a way of redistributing that load before it lands.
Small, unsung acts of goodwill
McFall is careful not to turn her argument into an excuse for miserliness. The spirit of the season, she writes, is generosity and goodwill, and there are small ways to serve it without signing up to run the bake sale.
Her suggestions are gloriously modest. Lower the volume on the self-service machine at the supermarket, so the robotic voice instructing you to remove an unexpected item from the bagging area becomes, in her words, almost soothing, like a thumb-sized person speaking through tiny cupped hands. She calls it an act of community service, and it is hard to argue.
She also floats conversion to the Quakers, partly on the strength of Dame Judi Dench, partly because Quaker meetings allow you to sit in silence for an entire session without speaking unless moved to do so. An hour of stillness in December, she suggests, beats a rowdy nativity service hands down.
A tiny Christmas, and why it works
The column ends with the most persuasive evidence of all: McFall's own experience. Last year, while her husband and children enjoyed a large family Christmas down south, she had what novelist India Knight calls “a tiny Christmas” with her mother and the dog. She describes it as modest, gentle and decidedly without flap or drama. Perfectly lovely.
That is the invitation she extends to readers. Not a bigger Christmas. Not a better-organised Christmas. A smaller one, decided on early, before the machine revs up.
For a country that prides itself on summer holidays at the beach rather than snow-bound excess, the idea should not be a hard sell. New Zealand Christmas already has its own rhythms: the pohutukawa in bloom, the barbecue replacing the roast, the beach towel standing in for the log fire. The imported pressure to do more, buy more and host more is exactly the kind of thing a pragmatic, outdoors-minded culture could stand to shrug off.
McFall's own writing elsewhere leans into this domestic detail. In a recent Substack post on everyday life and Halloween chaos, she sketches the same household: a carport turned into a horror walkthrough, a son dressed as a deranged monkey, parents recruited as zombie scientists. The voice is consistent. Family life is loud, funny and demanding, which is precisely why the quiet corners, a silent Quaker meeting, a tiny Christmas with mum and the dog, are worth defending.
FAQ
What does “putting the no in November” mean?
It means declining new commitments and responsibilities from early November through to Christmas Eve, so that December does not become overwhelming. The phrase comes from Leah McFall's column in the NZ Herald, inspired by her friend Cynthia.
Who coined the idea of a tiny Christmas?
McFall attributes the phrase “a tiny Christmas” to novelist India Knight. It describes a small, low-key holiday spent with a few loved ones rather than a large, busy gathering.
Does saying no in November mean skipping generosity?
No. McFall argues the season is still about goodwill, and small unsung gestures, like lowering the volume on a loud self-service machine, count as acts of community service without requiring anyone to host, bake or organise.