The Holidays
A splash of festive tonic for your inner Ebenezer
I’ll be donating all support for this week’s newsletter through Buy Me a Coffee to Nellie’s Shelter. Thank you!
I originally drafted a very long and sad chronicle of my lifelong fraught relationship with the holidays but it wound up truly bumming me out and putting me in bed for a whole day. So I scrapped it and am back the next snow-dappled morning to try something that feels a little unnatural for me: I’m going to write about what I enjoy about the season of joy. I hope that no matter how you celebrate (including not at all), or if you struggle with this time of year, that there’s something here for you.
When I sit with my bad feelings about the holidays and let them be there as they are, I’ll throw them some compassion and acceptance and after a while they are a little less spicy and I’m able to connect with my good memories and festive fondness. I’m happy to have realized that most of what I like about the holidays is sensory. It’s quite a revelation actually that I know I am able to let my body take over and just enjoy… it feels like something a therapist would tell you to put in your Holiday Survival Kit or something. Maybe after all these years of navigating difficult feelings this time of year I have finally found a map.
The map tells me to follow scents of clementines, cinnamon, cocoa, cedar and pine, butter and sugar, sage and onions. Twinkling coloured lights reflecting off of needled branches onto the ceiling in psychedelic patterns. ASMR crinkling of tinsel garlands. The crisp, cool winter air that’s still a charming novelty this early in the season. The funky taste of candied fruit and rum soaked cakes. The excited and purposeful energy of people on the street running festive errands. Annoying jingly Christmas songs on the supermarket radio on repeat for weeks. Otherwise gloomy evenings lit up with shimmering porch and yard decorations.
I’m also compelled by the act of tradition. As a kid raised in a secular, consumerist, Santa-as-all-seeing-all knowing-god version of Christmas, I always longed for more purposeful ritual and tradition that I’d catch glimpses of through friends or in movies. Although I appreciate the distance, I still enjoy witnessing traditions of others and quietly absorbing the mysterious reverence held for the ancient and sacred. The lighting of the menorah candles, midnight Christmas eve mass, the epic tales told in carols that I never gave a second thought to when I sang them as a kid like “holy infant, so tender and mild.” The saccharine sing-a-long Christian-morals-adjacent “god bless us, everyone” togetherness that still melts me at the end of movies like A Muppet Christmas Carol (a favourite).
But the traditions I love the most are the ones we make ourselves. I love it when they serve as acts of rebellion or ownership over the seasonal spirit of merriment that feels beyond our control. Around this time two years ago I was recovering from emergency surgery after I suffered a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. Then a few weeks after that we suddenly had to put down our sweet little cat Darla. Thankfully, we weren’t expected to show up to holiday gatherings. Christmas was effectively cancelled. Even though it took a traumatic loss to give me permission to skip celebrations, I was so relieved. It felt like it had been many years coming. I was finally allowed to take a break from the oppressive pain that had been coming up for me around the holidays. By Christmas day I was healed enough for Gabe and I to go have dinner in Chinatown. We were going through it, but the warmth and chaos in that restaurant combined with greasy noodles, sweet and sour sauce, enough Tsingtaos to get a buzz, and the company of other people not celebrating Christmas is such a sweet memory to me. We were doing it our way and in this way we made a space for grief at our table.
Last year, of course, was the 2020 pandemic lockdown and we took another year off from gathering. I was once again relieved because the anniversary of the ectopic was harder than I’d anticipated. I somehow simultaneously wanted for my grief to be acknowledged and also for everyone to leave me the fuck alone, so it was hard to know how to show up. I’m very glad I didn’t have to. We ordered a not spectacular yet absolutely perfect dinner from Mandarin and watched tv. Sometime before the end of the year we’ll probably order from them again, as a celebratory reminder of the strange ways that grief can enrich our lives when we allow it.
This year will be another Xmas Lite, but coming from a different place. Less of an act of rebellion and more about taking a contemplative rest before we welcome a new little person into our family who we’ll be creating new traditions with for the rest of our lives. For now I’m sitting comfortably under the glow of my sloppily decorated artificial fig tree with the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future while we take deep breaths together and calmly reflect.
If you are struggling during this holiday season, know that I have a big space in my heart for you. Expectations put on us during this time of year can magnify what we struggle with the most. You are most certainly not alone. Hopefully you can make space to celebrate or not celebrate in your own way. I’m also going to leave a few links and local numbers you can call or reach out to if you need some help.
Distress Centres of Greater Toronto: 416-408-HELP (4357) (available 24/7)
Gerstein Centre: 416-929-5200 (available 24/7)
Assaulted Women’s Helpline: 416-863-0511 (available 24/7)
LGBT Youthline: 1-800-268-9688 (available 24/7)
Daily Bread Food Bank: 416-203-0050 (available weekdays from 8:30am - 4:30pm)
Pregnancy And Infant Loss Network: 1-888-303-7245 (PAIL)
If you’re moved and able to do so I’ll be donating this week’s newsletter support through Buy Me a Coffee to Nellie’s Shelter.
I’ll be dropping some ceramics in the shop on Thursday December 2nd at 1:00 EST. Mostly box vases with a bit of cocktail glasses too. I’d recommend getting all of your orders in by the end of this week for them to be (hopefully… probably) shipped out in time. Canada Post is still pandemic wacky. And now I’m taking a break! The next Cup O’ Soup will arrive in your inbox sometime next year. See you in 2022!
