My second baby was born on the solstice, a particularly harrowing and death defying birth for me. She just turned 5. Solstice baby, pandemic baby. I was reading about Covid waiting for my induction. It is so apt that she is a solstice baby, because she is a blinding beam of sunlight. I don’t know how she does it. We make a big fuss about her birthday and talk up the Solstice. Axial tilt is the reason for the season. We always read the Susan Cooper poem.
Somehow I am having the best Christmas season, despite the horror show outside my walls. It helps that I gave up booze a few years ago and my parents moved close by so there is no travel required. We are shaping our own holiday traditions on our terms: festive but chill. A particularly stressful party was cancelled, and I excused myself from a lights at the zoo outing. My parents came over to trim the tree, do jigsaw puzzles, and eat Chex mix. I love taking a minute to appreciate that i have a TREE in my house, a lovely silver fir from the Rita’s parking lot, how genius is that? It has all been just right and a real balm for my soul.
The exhaustion we feel over the holidays is for one reason: we don't see the whole holiday cycle all the way through to its end.
Several years back, my husband and I discovered the Nordic tradition of Romjul. This is a particular celebration of the Twelve Days of Christmas that turns it into a season of profound hibernation and rest. As soon as the family leaves on the 27th, we settle into the house with our special Romjul gifts to ourselves -- new books to read, new pajamas and robes, cozy socks and slippers, lots of cocoa and things to spike it with. Until January 6, we revel in the dark -- sleeping as long as possible, waking in the middle of the night for a few hours of reading, lingering in hot baths, taking strolls in the dark, binging old movies, enjoying soup nights and Christmas leftovers for dinner. We turn into a pair of hibernating bears, snuggled down into our lair. Since our tradition is that the tree stays up until Twelfth Night, we spend a lot of time basking in its glow, in the quiet that follows the demands of the family holiday. When the tree comes down, the time-between-time of Romjul is over, and our year officially can begin.
I will grant that this kind of celebration isn't possible without great privilege (in our case, the privilege of retirement). But I think our Nordic cousins, who deal with extreme dark every year, got this one deeply right. After the holiday revels, we are ready to just shut down for a while.
We emerge revived, ready to embrace the growing light. (Usually, for us, this means booking travel starting in mid-January for somewhere warmer.) During COVID, years of Romjul proved to be excellent training for lockdown -- we know how to be happy and snug at home, and just dropped into a gear that already felt happy and familiar.
This year, we're leaving the US for good immediately after Christmas. The next three weeks will be a frenzied, stressful blur of packing and moving. But we're already planning to do a deferred Romjul as soon as we're settled into our new digs abroad in mid-January. If anything, we'll need it even more than usual. Skipping that season of rest gets any year off to a wrong start, but skipping it in 2025 will mean getting our whole new life off on a bad foot. We're going to take the time to fully nest in our new home before launching into that adventure.
A few years ago, I was in NYC on the upper west side in December, heading to a furniture store, . Two guys zoomed past me on a bicycle while blasting “All I Want For Christmas is You,” dressed to the nines and smiling ear to ear. It was delightful
My second baby was born on the solstice, a particularly harrowing and death defying birth for me. She just turned 5. Solstice baby, pandemic baby. I was reading about Covid waiting for my induction. It is so apt that she is a solstice baby, because she is a blinding beam of sunlight. I don’t know how she does it. We make a big fuss about her birthday and talk up the Solstice. Axial tilt is the reason for the season. We always read the Susan Cooper poem.
Somehow I am having the best Christmas season, despite the horror show outside my walls. It helps that I gave up booze a few years ago and my parents moved close by so there is no travel required. We are shaping our own holiday traditions on our terms: festive but chill. A particularly stressful party was cancelled, and I excused myself from a lights at the zoo outing. My parents came over to trim the tree, do jigsaw puzzles, and eat Chex mix. I love taking a minute to appreciate that i have a TREE in my house, a lovely silver fir from the Rita’s parking lot, how genius is that? It has all been just right and a real balm for my soul.
Dread and anxiety are more damaging than the things we fear.
The exhaustion we feel over the holidays is for one reason: we don't see the whole holiday cycle all the way through to its end.
Several years back, my husband and I discovered the Nordic tradition of Romjul. This is a particular celebration of the Twelve Days of Christmas that turns it into a season of profound hibernation and rest. As soon as the family leaves on the 27th, we settle into the house with our special Romjul gifts to ourselves -- new books to read, new pajamas and robes, cozy socks and slippers, lots of cocoa and things to spike it with. Until January 6, we revel in the dark -- sleeping as long as possible, waking in the middle of the night for a few hours of reading, lingering in hot baths, taking strolls in the dark, binging old movies, enjoying soup nights and Christmas leftovers for dinner. We turn into a pair of hibernating bears, snuggled down into our lair. Since our tradition is that the tree stays up until Twelfth Night, we spend a lot of time basking in its glow, in the quiet that follows the demands of the family holiday. When the tree comes down, the time-between-time of Romjul is over, and our year officially can begin.
I will grant that this kind of celebration isn't possible without great privilege (in our case, the privilege of retirement). But I think our Nordic cousins, who deal with extreme dark every year, got this one deeply right. After the holiday revels, we are ready to just shut down for a while.
We emerge revived, ready to embrace the growing light. (Usually, for us, this means booking travel starting in mid-January for somewhere warmer.) During COVID, years of Romjul proved to be excellent training for lockdown -- we know how to be happy and snug at home, and just dropped into a gear that already felt happy and familiar.
This year, we're leaving the US for good immediately after Christmas. The next three weeks will be a frenzied, stressful blur of packing and moving. But we're already planning to do a deferred Romjul as soon as we're settled into our new digs abroad in mid-January. If anything, we'll need it even more than usual. Skipping that season of rest gets any year off to a wrong start, but skipping it in 2025 will mean getting our whole new life off on a bad foot. We're going to take the time to fully nest in our new home before launching into that adventure.
A few years ago, I was in NYC on the upper west side in December, heading to a furniture store, . Two guys zoomed past me on a bicycle while blasting “All I Want For Christmas is You,” dressed to the nines and smiling ear to ear. It was delightful