"In hindsight it was a disaster." How Roxy Jacenko dealt with her husband being in jail for Christmas.

Sweaty Betty and Ministry of Talent entrepreneur Roxy Jacenko has admitted that navigating Christmas while the father of her two children was in jail was nothing short of “a disaster”.

In an interview with Fairfax, Jacenko outlined just how difficult this period was to explain to her children, Pixie, five, and Hunter, two

Her husband, Oliver Curtis, was jailed for two years in June for insider trading, just two weeks before she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

For Jacenko, when Pixie and Hunter would ask when their dad would be home, she didn’t have a definitive answer. After all, it’s not the kind of parenting scenario you expect and train for.

So she initially said Christmas.

“At the time, it seemed like such a long time away and it was the first major hallmark moment I could think of when I needed to explain when he would be back. It was the first date that came to mind,” she said.

But when Christmas approached and Curtis’ appeal was lost, she had little choice but pretend Christmas hadn’t, in fact, come and gone.

A photo posted by Roxy Jacenko (@roxyjacenko) on Dec 25, 2016 at 7:14pm PST

“We avoided making a big fuss over Christmas this year,” she said. “In hindsight it was a disaster as trying to avoid every Christmas tree in Sydney isn’t easy – so I’ve now updated the date [for when they will see Curtis] and used my birthday as the date [June 8] – I’ll just have to push it out by a few weeks.”

Talking about the Christmas period with Who magazine late last year, Jacenko said when Curtis was jailed Christmas seemed so far away. Long enough, perhaps, for Curtis to come home.

“My mum said to me the other day, ‘I think I’m going to go and get a Christmas tree.’ And I said, ‘You can’t, because I told Pixie and Hunter their father would be home for Christmas’,” Jacenko told Who.

“It was so far away then… Now, here we are.”

A photo posted by Roxy Jacenko (@roxyjacenko) on Jan 6, 2017 at 4:19pm PST

On Boxing Day, Jacenko and her two children flew to Hawaii for what was no doubt a much deserved break from home-life and the reality of 2016.

Despite what she has openly dubbed a “tumultuous year”, Jacenko doesn’t seem to wallow too much in her own pity. She’s just grateful for those who have come to her aid in a year she battled breast cancer, single parenting and husband behind bars.

“I am very lucky to have the support network around me that I do, my mother especially and my children have kept me sane and smiling. I often say to my friends that if it wasn’t for my children that I probably would have packed up and walked away,” she told Fairfax.