Here's hoping the mid-winter celebrations are going the way you want. A few days ago, I received a text from a friend needing to calm down from being vociferous (her word) about the whole commercial crap and thanking me for my small encouragement to get back on track to remember that the mid-winter festival can be whatever we want it to be.
It can be religious or not.
It can be family or not.
It can be commercial or not.
It can be trashy or not.
It can be spiritual or not.
It can be a stress-fest of what everyone else thinks you should be doing...or not.
Getting to my way of doing it, has taken years. Perhaps that should read “is taking years” because I suspect it is still evolving. The “should-stress” started to fall away when I started with stopping.
I stopped worrying about whether I got the right gift for someone (Clive, my Mam, certain friends) because I never did...not once. There is an immense freedom in knowing in advance that whatever you do present-wise will be criticised – either silently or aloud. It means you can do whatever you want without giving it a whole load of thought. Just accept that you do not know these people as well as you would wish, gift them what you think they would like – I mean you do have to give it some thought – and then just allow them to tell you what they don’t like about it, ask whether you have the receipt, stash it in the back of the cupboard to regift next year. It’s all good, so long as you don’t care about their response. I worked out that it wasn’t my job to make them happy – it was only my job to show that I cared. It was my job to try. I thought, I bought, I wrapped, I gifted with love. If that wasn’t enough – you know what? Not my problem.
I stopped worrying about the timing: how long the journey north would take, how soon I could come back, what time dinner was expected, who needed to be visited when, how long it would take me to walk to Clive’s if I went the ‘long way round’. Really? I couldn’t control the weather or the train delays. However much effort I put into going home, Mam’s first question (at least after she had said how good it was to see me) would always be “When are you going back?” I smile at that now. But there were times when it made me want to get on the very next train.
I stopped worrying about “having to show my face”. I only went to the office functions I actually wanted to go to – and never gave an excuse for the ones I chose not to attend, simply said that ‘sorry, no, not this time’. I only went to lunch with people who made me smile (or on the rare occasions that it was so, that I knew needed me to make them smile). I visited family because of the joy of the old stories. Even now, if I’m asked whether I’m staying for a coffee with the group and I decline and I get “but I’ve brought…” – that’s lovely and thank you and I genuinely appreciate the effort and the kindness, but…but I am not going to make excuses.
Simplifying my life is taking time, adding in complications is something I cannot afford and I do not need to justify that.
There are other bugbears that still need rootling out…but I’m working on it.
This is where I have to lay my cards on the table for anyone reading who does not know me or my story: me doing mid-winter the way I want is easy because I have no-one to please. No parents, no children, no partner. This year I don’t even have any rickety friendships that I might want to (or feel the need to) be careful around. All of my current friendships are currently solid.
Even so, I don’t think you need my degree of freedom to consider some of the possibilities.
I started early this year, round about Samhain and with one good friend still recuperating before being up to receiving visitors, it may well stretch to Imbolc. And I am loving the idea of mid-winter being a wave that builds and then flows out, a wave that covers the whole of winter, not just one day whose primary focus has no specific meaning for me anyway. “I am loving…” is not a bad prompt for thinking about what we do and don’t want in our festival.
My impromptu list looked like this:
- I love making next year's calendar and sending it out to people who will use it
- I love making the solstice greeting cards and sending them out
- I love twinkly lights and candles and tinsel and the tree and all the old baubles
- I love the idea of buying one new bauble each year – it used to be a thing, I haven’t for ages, so maybe there’s time yet
- I love walking my local streets and looking at the extravagant garden decor - I hope they know that whatever pleasure they get from doing it is magnified in the smiles of those of us walking past
- I love the scent of cinnamon – in the kitchen or in a candle
- I love meeting up with friends for lunches and dinners
- I love frost and snow
- I love late sunrises and early sunsets
- I love how early dark means you can have all of the romance of half-light and darkness and still get an early night
- I love not having to worry about what day anything actually happens on
- I love being in my quiet home, close to my woods and river, and not too far from the sea
This year, I started celebrating on my birthday and I have just kept going. And will. There's an interruption for a funeral, except...maybe even that isn't really an interruption, just a different kind of celebration, because I will be with people I otherwise would not be, lovely people, and we will share memories, tell stories.
Storytelling was a big part of my family Christmas tradition - the old, oft-repeated stories – I miss that.
During this year I have loved meeting up with people I haven't seen for a long time – and with people who are so new in my life – and all of that influences what I have done so far and what I will do next, but what affects it most deeply is that after five years of flinching whenever anyone asks me what I am doing for Christmas, I’m beginning to get to a point where I can just say “I’m not. I don’t do Christmas. This is what I will do to celebrate the solstice…[insert as necessary]…and in & around the holidays I’ll be [insert as necessary]…but 25th December has no special place”
I say I’m ‘beginning’ to get to that point. I’m still negotiating how awkward it makes other people feel. But here’s the thing: I will be alone on “the day”. It’s not that big a deal. I can either do what I want with that day, as I can with any other, or I can hunker down and pretend it’s not happening, or I can go on-line and help support a few people who will be having a far worse time than I am. For the last 5 years, I had a very clear plan for “the day” mostly centred around that last option. This year, I don’t. This year it actually doesn’t matter, because we’re only half way through December and I’ve already had such a brilliant time.
This year…
- This year I had a fairy-light fix at “Lumiere” in Durham
- This year, I had my first piece of Xmas cake & Baileys in mid-November
- This year, I spent time with my brother and sis-in-law
- This year, I met up with my lovely cousin and her daughters, for food and wine and conversation and connection and not a little silliness, a reconnection long overdue
- This year I will miss a workshop, but hopefully, will get beach-walks.
- This year, my tree went up early and I'm enjoying it immensely. Stupidly. Childishly.
- This year, I have been & will be spending more time with friends, old and new.
- This year, I am gifting thoughts and love and only token 'things'.
- This year, I don't care if they don't land right: feel the love – do what you want with the token
- This year, I feel like I have done enough.
- This year, I'm leaving it open to happen however it might.
- This year, I'm not asking anyone where they will be and who with and for how long, and I'm hoping they don't ask me those questions (but of course, already they are – some more sensitively than others)
- This year I didn’t send a single card because I thought I should, all of them were because I wanted to.
- This year I love the number of people who have chosen to write very detailed and specific messages in the cards they’ve sent – and I also love that I got a text from one who shall remain nameless saying ‘if you get at Moonpig card with nothing in it, it’s from me!’ Whoops. And smile! Just saying: you might get it back in the post next year!
- This year, I’m listening to people complaining about how much they “have” to do, I’m hearing people say they’re ‘dreading it’ or ‘looking forward to it being over’…and I’m feeling sad, that this is where the festival has degraded to, and I’m also feeling deeply grateful that I can choose to do it differently…
But really, I think everyone can choose to do it differently. I overheard my second-cousins explaining to the rest of their immediate family how they were proposing for all in the family to rein it in this year, setting the limits and parameters for spend, recognising that all the ‘commercial crap’ isn’t what it’s about. They were actually excited about the challenge involved in doing what they’d decided to do. It was loving and lovely and I applaud them.
So, I am hoping the mid-winter celebrations are going the way you want – if not, maybe you still have time to have a little tweak, but if not that, park the frustrations until, say 7th January and start with a “I loved” / “I less-loved” list – and plan a simpler, or indeed a more extravagant (it’s not for me to say), but definitely more YOU festival for next year.
I will be back after the winter solstice with a few thoughts on how that went for me, but in the meantime, I wish you all the rest and peace of this liminal time of the year. Take a pause and look to the skies. Go gently.
