How to make it feel like Christmas
Instead of relying on anything tangible to bring a feeling of Christmas, perhaps we'd be better to explore, accept and connect our emotions, even the uncomfortable ones.
I wrote the piece that follows a few years ago but it felt particularly relevant for now, a time that so often feels laden with reasons to feel despondent.
So many people find this time of year tough so I feel especially grateful for any joy that comes my way.
I was reminded of a particular moment of joy earlier this evening during a conversation with my family.
“I didn’t get crackers. They’re full of plastic tat and bad for the environment,”
“You don’t mind if we don’t have crackers, do you?” I said to my daughter.
“No. Nothing could beat that year we had the ones with the whistles,” and we both began to laugh.
A few years ago my wife bought a box which supposedly contained whistles of different pitches in each cracker so that everyone could join together and perform a rendition of “Jingle Bells” by blowing their particular whistle at the appropriate moment.
When all the crackers had been pulled we discovered that we all had a whistle of the same pitch.
“No wonder they were reduced in price.”
My wife was furious and felt she’d been duped by the shop, which served only to make the whole episode more hilarious as we all fell about whistling “Jingle Bells” using a single note.
You probably had to be there.
Anyway, the point is that it’s the emotion that makes Christmas feel like Christmas or makes anything else feel like whatever it is, and that includes the uncomfortable ones.
wrote a great essay this week about burnout and how we pathologise emotion in order to validate it. We don’t need to. We need to feel it and trust that what we feel is important.Whatever Christmas means to you, or even if it means nothing, I hope the coming days are full of emotions you can enjoy, learn from, or connect through.
As a child, I can remember that my mother had little ways of dulling excitement before it arrived. If I said I was looking forward to Christmas she’d say, “Don’t expect too much” or sometimes, if she was having a particularly difficult time, she might tell us that she “Didn’t feel very Christmassy”. These aren’t the things you want to hear when you are a kid looking forward to Christmas.
When I grew up I realised that she was often unhappy and that unhappiness cannot be permanently hidden. I’m not sure she had anyone to share it with although I felt it and often tried to carry it, even though I couldn’t and she didn’t ask me to.
In bed, waiting for the light to grow sufficient strength so that I can take Daisy for a walk, I am reading an article about “The Book Of Delights” by American poet “Ross Gay”.
In his book, he talks about how noticing the delights that are available to us in our lives in some way seems to develop a “delight muscle” so that the more we do it the more capable we are of doing it. In the end, gratitude becomes an inevitability rather than a rarity.
Having pulled on my wellies and headed off to the park my sister and I agree that we haven’t seen the lake as high as it is for years. The benches are underwater and the model boat club won’t get in without a boat.
It begins to rain and my sister says, “It doesn’t feel very Christmassy”
Later we pass a notice which details the work to build a new dam along the side of the park which will require the removal of 300 trees that have stood for many more years than any of us have been alive. It upsets my sister. “Sometimes I’m glad that I’m getting towards the end of my life,” she says. Sometimes she sounds a lot like our mum.
In Gay’s book, he points out that we all carry our sorrows and tragedies. They emerge from us not necessarily in a linear fashion, but frequently through what appears to be a dulling of our ability to see that things are not always as bad as they seem.
Sickness, rejection, bereavement, trauma, and self-destruction. None of us are immune to any of them and Gay refers to them as our “wildernesses”, and tells of a student he had who once asked, “What if we were to join our wildernesses together?”
In the pursuit of constant happiness and excitement perhaps we miss the parts of ourselves that benefit most from connection. It might be that through a mutual understanding of our struggles that joy and gratitude become easiest to spot.
Christmas is a time that many find difficult, so instead of fixating on the idea that we must have an enjoyable time, maybe we are better off appreciating the opportunity we have, if we are fortunate enough to be with other people, to join our wildernesses together.
My mum often felt she didn’t have anywhere to connect her wilderness. My sister and I, at the very least, have one another. How about you?
In the final episode of “Sideways” for 2023 we’re discussing alcohol-induced memory loss which no doubt many people will be experiencing over the coming days.
Thanks for being here. I appreciate you.
See you next week for the final push into 2024.
Thank you for all your words of wisdom x