Tag: holidays

Nada Christmas

I believe I have solved my Christmas ennui. This holiday comes after a very rocky and tumultuous pre-season. For the world at large and for me.

I honestly don’t think I can handle one more story about Gaza. Every time humanity survives a major global fiasco and declares “Never Again,” a new set of horrors rise up again.

I shake with mortification about the assumptions of younger me. To be fair, I think every 21 year old believes they can save the world. It is probably designed that way so we can continually relight the internal fires of ambition and hope as we struggle to get a toehold in life and on our feet.

Life changes us. All of us. One way or the other. Our ambitions don’t necessarily change but they narrow. We trade in our ambitions to save the world and focus on saving ourselves. We shift our focus away from helping faceless masses to supporting the individuals who are born or led to us.

I am not saying we should or do move away from sharing our wealth with causes that deserve our attention. It is just that it becomes necessary to make sure our own boat is solid and floating before we try to save the ill-fated Titanic.

I have done nothing for Christmas this year. And I want nothing. As I was dithering about this and wrestling with my old inner compulsions at this time of year, I came across a most helpful blog post.

Beloved writer Garrison Keillor of Prairie Home Companion on PBS fame published a post that popped up at just the right time for me. His stories about Christmases past resonated deeply with me as he recounted the fruitless hours he spent on finding “perfect gifts” that received an at-best lukewarm reception from the recipients.

He made a most convincing argument for escaping the commercial allure of the season. In his case, he will spend Christmas at sea with his wife and daughter and no presents. He is right about one thing.

At a certain stage we are all going to declutter the accumulated possessions of a lifetime. Either we take charge and see to that process while we are still able. Or, as many do, we leave the planet and foist the unwelcome task on obligated family members.

That lacks grace and consideration. A truly loving legacy is to leave behind clean closets and organized photo albums. Not shoeboxes full of unidentifiable and unwanted keepsakes that only you wanted to keep.

I took a page from Keillor’s blog post. Today we depart for parts south on a holiday road trip to places I have long wanted to see. Not a long holiday. Just the weekend and Christmas Day. But long enough and far away enough to temporarily sever ties with the weight of holiday expectations.

That’s good enough for me. It pleases me to consider that thousands and thousands of young families with small children out there to pick up the slack. Most children still shake with anticipation and excitement about Santa’s upcoming visit. It is a joyous, fleeting and delightful life stage. Until one day it isn’t.

Your kids choose to spend holidays with their lover’s family. Pals elect to get together and make Christmas their own way. Soon, you are planning a Christmas cruise with other girlfriends. Christmas, as we once knew it, is over.

It is not necessarily a bad thing. Christmas is a loaded season emotionally precisely for its history and traditions. I have newly widowed girlfriends facing their first Christmas without their husbands. Estranged parents make excuses or lie outright to peers about the amount of contact they have with their adult children.

I have one searingly honest friend who has never enjoyed the Christmas holidays and cannot wait until this “joyous” season is over. That joy is not universally shared by a long shot. Having to keep up appearances and fake feelings of joy at a difficult and emotional time of year can make it even worse.

So I am planting a new stake as a way to “celebrate” Christmas this year. Taking care of those nearest and dearest to me without much fanfare at all. Their company and outreach is all I hope for. I can say emphatically as I get older that truly is all that matters.

At the end of the day, holiday celebration is a deeply personal and individual choice. Rebel that I am I will be celebrating my own version of “holiday cheer” with my husband by leaving town.

Santa Claus is coming and, now that I’m all grown up, I don’t think there is room for both of us. If you’re lucky enough to have little ones in your life at this time of year, then enjoy them with gusto. It is a fleeting phase.

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate. Happy holidays to those who celebrate other mid-winter traditions.

Whatever you celebrate at this time of year, and however you choose to do it, focus on making it yours.

Facing Forward

Today the curator of the Ultimate Blog Challenge on Facebook asks us to plan the 90 days after the challenge ends on October 31st. Halloween for those of you who have been sleeping under a rock.

God knows I’ve tried to ignore the incessant commercial come-ons. How many Kit Kat bars and Reese’s Pieces can one person eat anyway?

This will be the third monthlong Ultimate Blog Challenge I’ve finished this year. Ninety days ahead takes us through November, December until the last day of January. Oy, do I have plans.

November 1st is always a new year’s day of sorts for me. It is loosely associated with All Hallows Eve or Hallowe’en. According to pagan Celtic traditions, it is said that on this day the spirits of the dead are most clearly present on planet Earth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samhain

It also marks the time of harvest and beginning of the “dark part of the year.” The only harvest I participate in is doing my part in filling up the sacks of local trick and treaters.

As my spiritual “New Year,” I do have some modest resolutions for the next ninety days.

Stay healthy. That’s always Number One and always will be. I am a devotee of the “health equals wealth” philosophy. Without health, wealth don’t mean much except applying it to attempts to restore it.

Develop a debt management plan. This is also a perpetual theme in my life. I would love to be one of those people sitting on bags of money. I’m not. I’m a very low profile, ordinary financial citizen. So I manage debt.

Survive the holidays. There is a swack of them coming up in the next ninety days. If you go by the dictates of advertisers, you could go broke tricking out and tearing down and retricking out your house for the tsunami of “blessed events” coming up.

My strategy is to do as little as humanly possible for each of these events: Halloween (in a couple of days); Thanksgiving; Christmas celebrations (which is essentially the whole month of December); New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. And all of January for recovery.

If the marketing strategy is to keep us on our toes by distracting us with one holiday after another that we are expected to execute “perfectly,” it is rather brilliant.

And if we don’t have the spirit or means to pursue holiday perfection, no matter. A whole lot of compensatory products are available out there to make us feel better about not “being perfect.”

If we are single and don’t have an existing or created family to go to all the trouble for, so much the better.

And, of course, I plan to keep writing. This blog has surprised me. Over 225 days in a row so far. The biggest surprise has been that I’ve managed to keep doing it every day and plan to continue. It centers me and reinforces my own views about the world and what’s happening in it. I wish I were more unfailingly optimistic about what I see.

By January 31, 2024, I expect to be six weeks away from the goal I set up on March 14th, 2024 of writing a daily blog post for a full year. I set out thinking I would have a book manuscript by then. That seems unlikely.

There have been an inordinate amount of distractions this year. Challenges I didn’t expect. Challenges I took on that cost me more emotionally and financially than originally anticipated.

External demands that ranged from irritating to overwhelming. I was never quite sure starting out which way a challenge was going to turn out. Life is surprising that way.

In spite of the roller coaster I’ve been on this past year, I am happy to report that marketing soaked holiday celebrations have not been among them. And won’t be, dieu merci.