Bring Back Christmas

Ah, the holidays. The year many of us travel thousands of miles to visit with family, cook for what seems like 24 hours, and endure complex present-opening rituals with polite “thank yous” for gifts we didn’t really need. Then, we clean up in a resentful, zombie-like state. Everyone goes to bed exhausted, drained, and looking forward to “Not Christmas.”

Does any of this seem familiar?

If you’re like me, you’re left wondering:

• What happened to the warm, fuzzy holiday cheer?

• Why must I go through all this trouble when all I wanted to do was spend meaningful time with my family?

• How didn’t I have a meaningful conversation or connection with anyone?

• Am I just a Grinch, or what?

I really don’t like feeling like this. Getting family together at the holidays shouldn’t be a trouble or a burden. The phrase “worth the trouble” doesn’t really work here. After all, spending meaningful time with family shouldn’t be trouble at all. Sometimes we try to hold onto past traditions so tightly that we miss other opportunities that would better suit us. If there doesn’t seem to be a point to the current rituals, then Christmas really is a burden after all.

What’s the point of the holidays, anyway?

Last year, my husband Josh and I ended up staying at home in Fort Collins for the holidays. This wasn’t the initial intention; we had planned on traveling to Michigan to see his family. Unfortunately, a relative in Florida became ill, and Christmas in Michigan was cancelled. We were sad about this, but in the end, we didn’t really mind, as plane tickets from Denver to Detroit were incredibly pricey at that time of year, and I, being four months pregnant, was dealing with daily in-and-out nausea. The thought of sitting through a potentially turbulent flight made me want to vomit anyway.

Instead, we spent Christmas at home. We made waffles. We watched Christmas movies, snuggled our dog Chauncey, and enjoyed the day on the couch, relishing the slow sanctity of our little cocooned family. We thought about our baby, the future, and how far we’d come to get to our happy present. We called our families, and shared holiday joy with them all. For dinner, we went to a local Thai restaurant where the service was exceptionally languid, but since “slow” was the theme of the day, we really didn’t mind at all.

We really did have a simple, heartfelt, and natural Christmas. The only thing missing was the rest of our family.

Christmas should be simple, heartfelt, and natural.

This year, we are traveling to see my family in the Chicago area for the holiday. And, to everyone’s excitement, we’re bringing 7-month old Everbaby with us. He just started sitting up, exercising all his vocal chords, and executing slow 360’s on the carpet. He has a great will to explore, and he casts a sweet, soft smile at everyone he meets. I can’t wait to see Everbaby sitting before the Christmas tree, adorned with twinkly bubbly lights and ornaments from my childhood. I can’t wait to watch him take it all in! I hope we can experience his many firsts slowly, without rushing. I want to wrap our whole family up in a blanket and snuggle them and share our joy with grandparents, aunts, uncles.

This year I’m going to Bring Back Christmas.

I’m going to bring back Christmas for my son, and for a sustainable future of holidays to come.

• This year, I’m going to decline participating in holiday traditions that leave me feeling exhausted, empty, and overwhelmed.

• This year, I’m going to stop living outdated expectations of the holidays.

• This year, I’m going to support a simple, mindful, meaningful holiday where both connecting with loved ones and connecting with the spirit of Christmas is the focus.

  Will you join me in bringing the holidays back to the basics, in whatever way that means to you?

Let’s Bring Back Christmas

The Meaning of the Season

The holidays force us to make time to be grateful, to connect with family, and to engage in conversation around a plentiful table. We cook together, clean together, travel together in close proximity; we sleep on the floor so that the older ones can take the beds. We make room for the cat, for the dog, and we snuggle on couches with hot tea while watching the parade on TV. There is stillness and simplicity in breathing the same air as our mothers and fathers and grandparents. There is a calm that accompanies the repetition of time-tested tradition. There is a warmth that memories of the past bring to our hearts, and there is a sweetness in the expectation of happy holidays to come. Varying in type and degree across all kinds of families, our special holiday rituals give us that deliciously satisfying sense of closeness, presence, and warmth that pave the way to the New Year.

Sometimes all the truth and beauty of the holidays can be overlooked by everything leading up to it. Let's start with the first holiday of the season, Thanksgiving. In recent years - or perhaps it's been happening for ages - I've noticed that Thanksgiving has lost some of its closeness, presence, and warmth. Thanksgiving has gradually become a time for Christmas decorations and shopping. Most, if not all, major department stores offer Black Friday deals. For smaller businesses, there's something called Small Business Saturday, and then every retailer has their own version of Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday, and so many more. Shops even open on Thanksgiving Day for Black Friday specials. Coupled into the biggest shopping weekend of the year, the sanctity of this historic day has been broken. 

If you peek back into history, you will discover that the date of the holiday was moved by Roosevelt to extend the Christmas shopping season by one week. How can we find meaning and importance in the beginning of the holiday season if Thanksgiving weekend is actually an economic requirement? 

Thanksgiving has lost its way in the American calendar. It has been stomped over and downtrodden by lines of intense, confrontational shoppers waiting to get their early-bird wristbands and buy the latest gadget or clothing item. Impatient and intolerant, we lash out at others if our expectations aren't met. Please google "racist rant at Chicago Michael's" to see what I mean.

Perhaps this Season of Thankfulness is only a cover-up for our economic dependence on compulsive materialism. We want to be "thankful," but here we are, circling laps through the self-indulgent lands of capitalism, running an inner marathon. We are too busy cultivating our outward thankfulness to realize what we are actually doing. In snapping selfies during the holiday season, our narcissism spills over in edited images of ourselves: Here's me being thankful! or, Here's me with the 24lb turkey I cooked! and again,  Here's me with my family! And of course, we must include all the appropriate ornamental hashtags: #soblessed #thankful2016 #passthegravy #thankfulday #countyourblessings #turkeycoma...

When families get together to share in their lives, wonderful results can occur. Generations collide and meaning is made. New truths are told and memories are wrapped up in hugs, laughter, and pensive moments before the dawn of a new year. Magical moments come alive, and we suspend our disbelief without asking How? or Why? And, when that magic returns to us, we smile at the echo of our parents' voices from many decades ago: If you are quiet, and listen closely, you just might hear the bells on Santa's sleigh...

Wonderful results can only occur if we intentionally shed at least some of the superficiality of the holiday. We really should be tapping into the true meaning of the season. In order to authentically feel the simplicity, warmth, and presence of the holiday, we should ask ourselves:

1. Why are we celebrating? 

2. What about this day (or moment) brings us joy?

3. How can we grow, even just a little bit, from an interaction with a cousin/aunt/brother?

4. Why are we going through such great lengths to produce a perfectly seasoned, succulent turkey?

5. Moreover, how can we extend our harvest of thankfulness year-round, and to others in this world? 

“Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and give thanks continuously...Because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson
 

Be a Friend

"You can't stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes." - A. A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

Festival of India, Washington Park, NYC, 2013

True friendship, according to Aristotle, is one of the "highest goods," or virtues most valued in life. More than two millennia after Aristotle's death, people continue to prove that life is more meaningful when experienced with others.

After seeking freedom from society and from conformity, Christopher McCandless came to the realization that "happiness is only real when shared."

C. S. Lewis agrees, saying that friendship may seem unnecessary on the surface, but it is "one of those things that give value to survival."

When America Online started to serve the masses in the early 90's, the concept of friendship began its transformation. Instead of the noun "friend," we now usethe verb "to friend," as in "friend me on Facebook." This practice has reduced friendship to a passive networking activity, one where it is more important to be recognized as a connection than to actually be a friend. Driven by convenience, this trend dilutes what it means to truly be a friend, and the quality of our true friendships is suffering for it. We are postponing the maintenance of meaningful friendships, thereby treating friends as mere connections.

Conditioned by the ease of typing to our friends, we may wake up one day and find ourselves with many, many friends, but that we are utterly alone. This new method of friendship has turned us into solitary individuals, silently typing into devices, reaching for one another in a boundless, virtual world. 

Unfortunately, hyper-connectivity is here to stay, so our job is to develop the skills necessary to nurture our 21st century friendships in deserving ways. It is important to meet our friends in real time, and in real space, to nurture these relationships. Prearranged outings show that we are aware of our friend's importance, and that we value their time. Face-to-face interactions assist in building our relationships, and help us to validate each other by sharing activities and experiences. 

Meaningful growth occurs in these personal moments, causing us to reach out, again and again, for our friends.

Hiding ourselves in text messages, emails, and status updates does nothing to get us out of our "corners of the forest." As A. A. Milne points out in his stories about Winnie the Pooh, "we must go to our friends," because they give meaning to our lives. We must remember that true friendships take time and effort to nurture, and we must do the work necessary to deserve our friends. For after all, it is through the presence of our friends that we are able to thrive, and be happy.