Happy Solstice. It’s here. The longest night of the year, the Winter Solstice, is here. Another year over. Another winter has arrived.
I woke early and considered going back to sleep, but it was obvious I’d be fighting my sinuses and rather than wake everyone else, I got up. The sun won’t rise until 07:48 this morning. Less than 9 hours later, it will set. Short day. Long night. Ah, but seasons are cycles and the wheel keeps turning. It is time once again for the days to begin growing longer. I’m grateful to see another solstice. I hope I see many more.
Something like a view.
I park at the trailhead after a drive that was eerily free of traffic. I park with a view of the eastern horizon, and of the shallow seasonal lake that develops each year in the farm fields across the highway from this nature park. In the darkness, the reflected lights of the communities beyond give the appearance of a “waterfront location”. It is a pretty illusion. I sit sipping my coffee, waiting for the first hint of the sunlight of a new day. It’s a colder morning. I’m grateful for thinking to bundle up a bit.
… another Solstice…
Yesterday was the new moon, which seems fitting. A clean slate, a new beginning, a turn of the calendar page – all ideas to do with renewal. I like that. I sit sipping a hot cup of cheap coffee in the darkness. The cup is warm in my hands. The coffee is still too hot to do more than sip it carefully. The hot liquid is soothing on my throat.
Giftmas is only days away. Presents are wrapped. The lights on the tree illuminated the living room softly as I left the house, and the recollection of that merry glow fills me with joy. I sit awhile thinking about holiday traditions and rituals. ‘Tis the season, after all. I smile when I think about the basket of sharable treats assembled and waiting to be placed on the table. I reflect on community and sharing and a moment of light and abundance, a celebration of triumph over the winter and the darkness.
My coffee becomes properly drinkable after cooling a bit. The challenge now is to drink it and enjoy it before it goes cold. I breathe, exhale, and relax, hands warmly embracing the paper cup. I meditate, enjoying the scent of the coffee, and the stillness and quiet of a Sunday Solstice morning. There is no traffic. The geese, still asleep, drift on the fields covered in shallow water and on the marsh ponds. A lone coyote darts across my view. I love this part of Oregon for the characteristics of wild and rural spaces adjacent to suburbs and towns. Seeing deer wandering through McMinnville as if they belong still delights me, and I’m alert for cototes, bobcats, deer, and racoons as I drive in the early morning. I see them often. Well, all but the bobcats, lynxes, or cougars, which are not only much more rare, but also much less inclined to enter human spaces if they can avoid doing so. It would be rare indeed to see a wild cat of any sort wandering about in town.
I sigh contentedly. The temperature is still a chilly 38°F (3.3°C). I’m grateful for my cozy sweater and my fluffy warm cardigan. I reach into the gear bin in the back of my SUV and find my wool hat, scarf, and gloves, by feel and pull them out. It’s definitely cold enough for putting on a scarf and hat. The gloves would once have been left behind in favor of shoving my hands into my pockets, but I reliably take my cane along these days, so gloves are no longer optional on cold mornings, if I hope to keep my hands warm.
I bundle up, saving my gloves for last to finish this bit of writing. My left foot is griefing me with a bit of tendonitis, and I am wondering how far I’ll really go, today, but I don’t give up on the walk completely. I remind myself to stop by the storage unit and get more (better) pictures of an item we’re hoping to sell, and maybe take a load of smaller stuff over to the new unit. I’ll spend the day mostly creating order from chaos (doing housework) and writing to far away friends, and listening to holiday music.
A little more light, a little more view.
I notice that I can now see the ground pretty easily, although dawn is still almost 20 minutes away. Good enough for trail walking, and I won’t need my headlamp. I stretch and yawn, and rub my aching shoulders. It is the Winter Solstice, and a new day is dawning. It’s time to begin again.
I have been taking a look back at Giftmas holidays past… Thinking and remembering, and considering the gaps in my recollections, that – in spite of being “gaps” – are part of what makes this holiday so “magical” and wonderful for me.
My childhood memories, though few, are visceral, powerful memories triggered by scents, by colors, by the twinkle of lights in the periphery of my vision on a winter day. They tend to be what continues to provoke me to “chase the dream” and try to hard, year after year, to recapture that magic. (Sometimes this has led me to stray from my path.) I don’t remember early Christmases, aside from a few lingering recollections of a particular gift item – a bicycle with a purple “banana seat”, a Barbie van, a kitchen playset, roller skates… they aren’t attached to years or context, I just remember those things as existing, connected to Christmases past.
The Ghosts of Christmas Magic.
My most intensely magical recollection of Christmas was a particular year… 1972? 1973? The tree stood in a bucket on the front porch, all the way to Christmas Eve. More than once that year my Dad snarled “if you kids don’t behave, there won’t be any Christmas!” Which terrified me to my child-soul. (Was I really that bad?! That Santa wouldn’t come at all…??) I had no understanding of adult hardship, or adult anxiety, or the pressure parents might face to “deliver” on the promise of Christmas to a child.
Two people who understood Christmas magic.
I went to bed that night, the house entirely ordinary in every way, feeling a bit saddened by my apparent naughtiness. I woke later, in the wee hours, to sounds I didn’t understand, and crept down the stairs very quietly – I could see light, around the corner of the landing. I peered down and around, hoping not to be seen, and… the wonder. The pure magic of the tree fully decorated, fully lit, stockings hanging from the mantlepiece. The piled up presents shimmered and sparkled as the tree lights twinkled. Wow! Santa had come!! I ran back up the stairs and crept close to my Dad, sleeping in my parent’s big bed. “Daddy? Daddy!” I wispered, “Santa came! He was here!” My father sleepily replied “You must not have been as naughty as I thought. Go back to sleep for a little while, it’s too early – he’s probably still working on things in the livingroom. If he sees you up, he’ll take it all back.” I raced quietly back to bed, and lay still and awake, listening carefully, for what seemed like hours, until my next youngest sister also woke, and also crept down the stairs, and came hollering back up like a storm “Santa was here! Santa was here!” and waking the household.
The morning became a chaos of wrapping paper shredded then discarded, a fire in the fireplace, and the arrival later of grandparents with more presents, Mom in the kitchen making breakfast, and Daddy making Bloody Mary’s. I only understood later how late into the night they’d been up, sharing the evening over package wrapping and toy assembling and tree decorating, and how little sleep they’d actually gotten that night (because I’d woken up around 5 a.m.) – but the magic lives with me even to this day. Real Christmas magic, created by mortal parents, for the delight of little girls. Beautiful. I don’t remember a single thing I got that Christmas – but I sure remember that Christmas.
Something changed after that Christmas, in a wonderful and unexpected way. The very next Christmas, Santa rather unexpectedly left our stockings at the foot of our beds! I remember waking (again, too early) and seeing/feeling it there… my stocking! Full of… Christmas! I surreptitiously dumped it on my bed, and gently looked through it, certain I shouldn’t be. I crept quietly to my parent’s bedroom, and gently woke my Dad to tell him, “Santa made a mistake and left my stocking on my bed, Daddy!” he opened one eye, reluctantly it seemed, and eyed the clock on his nightstand – 4 a.m. – “Go ahead and open it quietly, Babygirl, it’s okay. You can enjoy anything you find there as long as you’re quiet until at least 7 o’clock. If your sisters wake up, tell them, too, okay? Daddy wants to sleep until 7 o’clock, okay?” “Okay, Daddy,” I wispered, and softly slipped away to my room, closed the door and turned on my light.
Christmas had come! There were chocolates and lollies, and maple sugar candy, and little toys and puzzles, and a necklace of sparkly beads, and a tangerine in the toe of my stocking – I ate it first, feeling very “good” to save the chocolate for later. By 7 a.m., I was waiting impatiently, all sugared up, and so were my sisters. We three went to the door of my parents room promptly at 7 o’clock, “Daddy? Daddy… it’s 7 o’clock. Santa was here. It’s Christmas.” I heard my Mom groan from the other side of the bed. “Ern, couldn’t you have said 9??” (Ever after that Christmas, the stockings were always on the foot of our beds. A tradition I still adore, and what a creative way for exhausted hungover parents to get just a little more sleep. lol)
There were other merry Christmas holidays with family, and I enjoyed them. The holidays with my Granny as a teenager, spent visiting my various aunts and sharing the holiday with younger cousins, were lovely and safe and warm and joyful and full of light and love and tasty homemade cookies. I remember some of those moments, and what I remember I remember quite fondly. They blur together a bit, forming neither recollections of heartache nor recollections of profound joy. That’s okay, too; I know I was loved.
The Ghosts of Christmas Trauma
I’ll tread lightly here, because it’s a bit of a buzz kill; my first marriage was full of violence, terror, and trauma. Peculiarly, it was also were I found my earliest artistic encouragement, and Christmases were strange, sorrowful, scary, beautiful and full of madness. We were both trying to capture magic we remembered, but it all went terribly wrong as often as it ever went right. I developed a real terror around putting lights on the tree, and a profound, lasting, gut-wrenching anxiety that any single light might be placed “incorrectly”, resulting in unspeakable punishment.
The eagerness of Christmas morning was outweighed by the fear that a gift might be the wrong size, or color, or brand, or type of thing. My joy and my terror competed for attention, every year. I have magical memories of the Augsburg Kristkindlesmarket those years that we lived in that beautiful city, but I also remember walking without a coat on a snowy Christmas Day hoping to find any shop open wherein I could buy something special to replace something that wasn’t “good enough”, tears freezing on my face, ankles cold in the snow, shaking as much with fear as with the cold.
The first Yule season holiday after I finally left that nightmare was… strange. My Granny was fearful that I wasn’t ready to be alone, and invited me out to spend Christmas with her. It was lovely and warm and gentle, and I’m so glad I went. It was a time of healing, and I definitely needed that. When I wept over the loss of all my precious ornaments collected over the previous 14 years, she reminded me that I could start over (and she had sent me a box of antique ornaments she knew had been special to me as a child, that I would find waiting for me when I returned home. I still have those). She sent me home with something to think about, too; I could make Christmas over into something that felt right to me. My values. My idea of magical. No fear. The seeds of my own Giftmas traditions were born in that gentle holiday spent with my Granny, in 1995, as we talked about love and marriage and trauma and divorce and the challenges of finding our way through the chaos in life.
Tales of Giftmas Present(s)
Ever since that Christmas back in 1995, I’ve cherished the holiday season from Thanksgiving to New Year’s my own way and shared that love and joy with my partner(s), over various relationships over the years. I have ornaments from so many years – each year I add at least one new one, something special that says something about the year that has passed, and what made it special.
This year’s special ornament, made by my beloved Traveling Partner, favorite “sticker” characters we have swapped back and forth in our DMs all year, Peach and Goma.
I think about my Dear Friend, and Giftmases we shared over the years. So many special ones.
I enjoy really celebrating each year as it draws to a close. I love finding gifts to delight friends, family, loved ones. I love filling stockings each Giftmas Eve. I enjoy the shopping. The wrapping. The presents under the tree. I love the memories – year by year new beautiful memories add to those that have come before, crowding out the memories of terror or of sorrow. I remember the gifts, and the moments, and the love, every year. It’s not about gifts for me (though I definitely do love presents!); it’s about the gratitude, the appreciation, the fondness, and the celebration – and showing that joy through gift-giving as a tradition. The giving (and even the shopping) is a special thing of its own, and it has importance to the celebration, for me. Giftmas is built on these moments of giving and sharing: shared moments of light in a world that sometimes feels filled with darkness, moments to share “enough” and make it feel bountiful, and moments to set aside life’s challenges in favor of shared comfort and joy.
That very first Giftmas I spent with my Traveling Partner is a particularly fond memory filled with adult holiday magic, joy, and love. 2010. We had moved in together, and we didn’t have a lot (we’d both recently been through bad breakups and a lot of upheaval, moving suddenly had been very costly). We didn’t make much money, and rent was a bigger piece of our budget than ideal. It was hard times. We were doing our best, and agreed that maybe this year we’d “just skip Giftmas”. Wasn’t love enough, after all? I didn’t cry over it (at least not where he could see me), because it just made sense. Practical. Real. We were, after all, both adults.
I came home from work feeling a little blue one cold afternoon to a little tree in the corner of the livingroom, decorated for Giftmas, lights ornaments and little presents underneath. I remember the happy tears, and the joy on his face to see me so delighted. I remember his strong arms around me. I remember the love. More Giftmas magic. No fear. No sorrow.
So much love captured in a moment.
One of the most beautiful things my Traveling Partner did for me was buy me my first pre-lit fake tree, so I wouldn’t have to string the lights every year. He had seen (the prior year, before we moved in together) how much it hurt me, and how I struggled happy/sad with it, and he made it right. (I fucking love that guy.) Another beautiful memory of Giftmas magic. The real caring and consideration, the thoughtfulness, and the love; if I hadn’t understood how much these are part of Giftmas before, I surely knew then.
Along the way there have been so many lovely holidays. Beautiful moments. Giftmas magic. Thanksgiving feasts and New Years’ toasts. It’s a beautiful season and I do it my way – I’ve learned. There have been ups and downs and challenges, and years when there just wasn’t any money to be fancy, and years when somehow things were amazing in spite of that. Eventually, I enjoyed some Giftmas holidays “all alone” – and I enjoyed those my way, too. They were beautiful and bright and full of love, and solitude did not diminish that. One of those is among my favorites.
The more recent years are reflected in my writing (and I’ve grown along the way):
I sit for moment, thinking about how fortunate I am, and how far I’ve come. I’m grateful for every sparkle of Giftmas magic, and every year that I’ve enjoyed some little moment that continues to stand out for me now. No doubt there’s more to say, and I thought I had some kind of point… I guess I’m saying “begin again” when things seem to be sliding sideways unexpectedly. Put love first, and take care of yourself. Be kind and be compassionate and thoughtful, and take time to enjoy little moments of joy and delight – and make the holiday magic on your own terms. It’s not a contest, or a race, and there’s no report card at the end. There’s nothing to live up to that you didn’t make up on your own. I smile and sigh to myself, feeling content, feeling merry, feeling grateful and incredibly fortunate – and excited about Giftmas day. It’s only 3 days away!
The trailhead parking is thankfully empty today. My “extra headache” has abated (but my Traveling Partner and the Anxious Adventurer now seem to have it, so maybe some kind of illness going around). The rain has been quite light and intermittent. I swap my shoes for my hiking boots, expecting to get a walk in before work this morning.
I breathe, exhale, and relax. My neck aches ferociously and my tinnitus is quite loud this morning. Typical physical bullshit I deal with daily, and this morning I don’t let it wreck my mood. I am feeling the holiday spirit this year, more than some years. I enjoy the excitement and feeling of being “lifted up”. It’ll no doubt pass; most emotional experiences are very temporary. I’m okay with that. I’m enjoying it now, and listening to the rain fall. I’ve got holiday carols stuck in my head and just now realized I haven’t sent cards! LOL
… I guess I’ll do that this weekend…
It’s a nice morning for beginnings. I listen to the traffic rolling by on the wet highway. The rain has stopped, at least for now, and it’s definitely time to begin again. I grab my cane and my headlamp and get on with it.
Giftmas isn’t the wholly inclusive holiday we like to imagine it is (those of us who are deeply into it, I mean). There are a lot of people who suffer the winter holidays as they suffer winter itself; eager to put it behind them, and wishing to see the sun again. It’s complicated being human.
When we are told to “be happy”, it can make us feel ever so much more miserable that we seem unable to achieve that for ourselves.
When we have the religious values of one or many faiths thrust upon us repeatedly, for weeks, as secular human beings who don’t practice a faith at all, we may feel excluded from practicing community and culture, itself. We may feel invisible, and unappreciated, as human beings.
When we are bombarded with media marketing for luxury goods “on sale” that we can’t envision ever being able to afford at any price, it can make us feel like outsiders in our communities and our world – trapped.
When we hear “glad tidings” of “comfort and joy” on every radio station, every streaming service, every TV advertisement, and in every retail store or restaurant, while we grieve the loss of loved ones, it can make us feel very much as if the world doesn’t see us here at all.
The result is often that we punish ourselves with our misery, even to the point of feeling guilty or ashamed that we don’t “get it” or “enjoy all that”. That’s pretty shitty, and it’s not fun, and it is uncomfortable. Any of that. All of it.
I’m very merry at Giftmas, myself. In spite of not being a practicing Christian (see: “Giftmas”), in spite of many years of being not at all “happy”, in spite of having very little money in many years (and this one) to spend on gifts, charity, or feasting, in spite of grieving poignant painful losses: I am merry, each Giftmas. I even want to share how that can be a thing.
A good beginning.
There’s no money to splash around on luxurious lavish gifts and frippery this year (and nothing in the picture above required me to spend any money, this year; it’s built on what I already had, and have cared for, for a lifetime), instead, I’ll share “How to be Merry at Giftmas”. 😀 It’s a simple enough idea, in it’s most basic form; make it yours. That’s basically it, summarized. I know, I know, saying something super simple to communicate something nuanced is a bit of a cheat, intended to make it feel accessible, but sometimes missing the most important points. So. Ready? Merry Giftmas, Y’all! Here we go!
The magical Giftmas that almost wasn’t.
Start with where you are. Start with who you are. Your authentic self, your actual values, your own vision.
I grew up in the midst of violence, emotional, physical, sexual (and uncomfortably commonplace in the culture). Guns, alcohol, and rage just… every-fucking-where. Poverty. Trauma. Chaos. Fear. Learned helplessness. Abuse. Gas-lighting. Rather peculiarly, each year that I can clearly recall (sorry, head trauma, right?), it seemed as if “Christmas time” was some sort of surreal cease-fire in the household hostilities (and somehow, even out in the world). “Healing” wasn’t even on my radar yet; I still had an additional lifetime of further trauma, turmoil, and heartbreak ahead me, that I could not even see. (It’s likely that, in some measure, a great many of us do, actually, regardless where we stand right now. Sorry.) Something about the holidays stuck with me; the best bits, actually. Grand holidays meals when far away family arrived to join us at the table. Mornings of twinkle lights and brunch recipes untasted at any other time of year. Gifts. Out of the pain, out of the chaos, for some weird reason, once a year we all sat down together and exchanged gifts. Gifts. We took from our own resources, to give of ourselves to each other. All of it amounted to an extraordinary departure of all of the routines. It seemed… magical.
I have come so far from this place.
My first “Christmas” as an adult, at 18, was… weird. I was in the Army. I was in advance training (and for fuck’s sake already married??), and I went “home” (to my parents house, at my new husband’s instance, even though I was deliberating estranging myself from them, for… reasons). It wasn’t much of a holiday. Uncomfortable, strained by the presence of a stranger (my new husband). I don’t actually recall it at all clearly; I was working too hard trying to live everyone else’s vision of what my life should look like to really make sense out of it, at all. It would have been… 1981?
My Giftmas stocking – and how I keep track of where I was each Giftmas. 😀
That was the missing puzzle piece; an understanding of what it takes to make a holiday, myself. See, that’s the thing; we have choices. The day, the season, the time, these are ours to make as we wish to experience them.
I re-created my vision of Giftmas that year, made it over based on my own vision of celebrating the winter holidays, and Yule, in accordance with my own understanding of the “meaning of the season”, which, speaking frankly, has nothing to do with gods or religions, and everything to do with community, charity, gratitude, love, and celebration. It’s winter. We’re all stretched a bit thin at the end of the year – it made sense to me that my Giftmas could be a celebration of sharing, fitting the cultural practices, and keeping all of what I love about the winter holidays, and letting go of all of what did not suit me, personally. I enjoy the merriment. I enjoy the moment to celebrate lost loved ones and honored departed, yes, and still be merry – there is no shame in our tears, or our joy. I love to give a friend some small thing, to say “thank you”, “I love you”, “you mean something to me”, or even just “I know it’s been hard this year”. We’re all in this together, each having our own experience, and each year we have this colossal near-global cross-cultural celebration that clearly extends well-beyond the reach of any one faith; it’s just not really at all about religion. Any religion. lol It’s about everything else, so joyously and so much that any religion within it’s sphere of influence wants a piece of that pie. Me too. So – I celebrate Giftmas. It’s an honest celebration of plenty-amidst-famine, and I celebrate lavishly and generously when I have a lot, and I celebrate joyously and heartily with whatever I’ve got when times are tough. I generally celebrate the season as commencing with the Thanksgiving meal – a season of gratitude and sharing – and I celebrate until I end the holiday season with New Year’s Day with my personal “One Hour” celebration (a contemplative time to explore the past, and plan for the future). It’s scalable sort of holiday, for me, that I can blow out of all reasonable proportion in times of plenty, and still enjoy with irrepressible joy in times of privation. That’s right. I think Giftmas lasts more than a month. LOL 😀
Actually, I take the long holiday season so seriously that I regularly give gifts randomly all through the season; nothing gives a beat down to a stressful moment like an authentic expression of value in the form of a small unexpected gift, or a moment over a holiday treat. 😀 Certainly, there is no legitimate reason to ration connection, presence, or joy. 😉
It’s okay to feel deeply. It’s very human. I even raise a glass to my Dad.
It does take practice. Sometimes there are poignant moments. I’ve shed many tears either putting up, or taking down, the holiday tree; every ornament has real meaning for me. Gathered with care over many years, each is like a tiny memory box, bringing back floods of emotion, and memories untapped any other time of year (not all of them are pleasant, and I often remind myself that the way out is through). I have reflected on so many holidays, and taken from them what worked for me. This is the secret sauce, and the source of merriment; this holiday is mine.
Like our lives, a celebration is built on so many things. Yeah, there are verbs involved.
Merry Giftmas, friends and readers and friends who are readers, and humans I don’t know at all. Make of it what you will. May the season show you magic and wonder – and may you be the creator of magic and wonder in someone else’s holiday. May the year ahead show us each the path to being the human being we most want to be, and may the journey to become that person be enlightening, and maybe not to terribly difficult. 😉
Are you having a rough holiday season this year? Please – oh please, dear one, please begin again! ❤
Evening Light 