By Alexis Baran
@travelgoths
For some, this may be the year where you hug your traditions tight, because they are the closest thing to your family that you can actively embrace. But maybe, for others, this could be the year you get to gleefully dismiss every tradition that never resonated with you, or that slowly lost meaning the years ticked by. Change it all. Overhaul. Or, just take the pieces of the season that you love and make something up that’s entirely new and feels fully yours.
This is how I rediscovered my holiday warmth.
As a kid I lied about my belief in Santa for more years than I remember actually believing in him. At about the age of six or seven, I left a long and detailed questionnaire for “Santa,” curious to see what kind of answers I would get. My parents could tell by the questions I asked that I had pulled back the curtain. (I cannot imagine what being interrogated via hand-written note on Christmas eve by your six-year-old feels like.)
Still, it seemed to make adults happy and to talk about Santa to me. Their eyes would light up, and they would hang on my reaction. Every December, for years–both before and after my parents figured me out–I would uncomfortably lie to both adults and other children because it was what was expected of me.
I learned that the Holiday Season was about doing what was expected of me to ensure everyone else was happy.
As I became a young adult, I drifted through the motions of whatever was expected of me to ensure everyone else would enjoy Christmas. I rarely considered that there might be something I would want out of it. I was living in the basement room of a duplex with porch steps so rotten that Canada Post refused to deliver mail there.
The inside wasn’t any better, with a painted cement floor and walls so thin I could feel the cold actively seeping through. I paid rent with a minimum wage retail job, meanwhile attending university. I bought gifts I couldn’t afford because I wanted to ensure I matched whatever I thought I might receive once I was away from my self-imposed student squalor. I’d rather eat ramen and eggs for a few months than be kept up all night with my irrational but inevitable guilt.
The student squalor went away as time passed, as I transitioned from young adult to just plain adult, and that squirming gift guilt turned to a bitterness of holiday consumerism. Instead of purchasing gifts, I started giving cards with charitable donations in people’s names. But those are awkward, too, when you’re being handed a brightly decorated box of something for yourself. And they don’t fly at all when you’re at a partner’s family Christmas.
Then, one year, finally, I decided I did want something out of it. I wanted that celebratory, deep, meaningful feeling that everyone talks about. I wanted it without lies and consumerism and guilt.
The first thing I wanted was freedom from gifts. My partner and I are non-gifters for the holidays and it’s the best feeling. Besides, of course, catnip pillows and a new scratching post for the cats. (The kids need gifts, right?)
The next thing I wanted, I made up as I went along. It’s become one of the most meaningful things I feel all month and it’s now as essential to the holiday spirit as putting up a tree.
Four years ago, my partner and I decided to make our own Yule wreath to celebrate Solstice. We didn’t have a car yet, so we wandered around nearby Dude Chilling Park, China Creek Park and 10th Ave picking up branches and clipping small low-hanging pieces here and there. We carried them awkwardly home and spun together a wreath, assisted by sewing thread and a few twist-ties. The silly looking little wreath was proudly hung above our balcony door. It hung through December and January and February… and the rest of the year.
When next winter Solstice came, it occurred to us that we should replace the wreath. In the recognition of the return of light after the darkest day of the year, as well as the end of the previous year and the beginning of the new year, I thought it most fitting to take down the old wreath and burn it before rebuilding.
There are not a lot of places to light year-old crafts on fire in the city. We bundled up and carried it down to the beach with a bottle of wine.
I pulled the twist ties out from the tangle and we dug a little hole in the sand. As the flames curled the evergreen boughs, it felt like a swell of ceremony, and I announced what I would like to let go of from the year and what I would like to carry forward, as I took a slug of wine from the bottle, made eye contact with my partner, and passed the bottle to him.
Without missing a beat, he took a slug of wine and did the same.
And our own tradition was born.
Last year’s wreath is still hung above our patio door. All year it’s grabbed bits of my hair as I went outside to tend the garden, and it’s become a familiar comfort. It is a thick wilted ring of muted greens and golden beige.
I’m looking forward to about a week from now when we’ll drive out to the woods to spend an afternoon collecting wet branches, discussing which ones are good, and what size we need more of. I’m looking forward to driving to the beach at midnight and setting fire to the old year. Whether it’s the glow of overcast, or a clear dark sky with a few stars cutting through the city’s shine, I look forward to sharing our thoughts and hopes for what may lie ahead. I’m looking forward to my toes getting cold in the depth of nightfall all around us and the city glittering in the distance, little trees in stacked windows, each illuminated with their own traditions and families and the things that make them warm.
If there’s a cat in sight, Alexis will be sitting on the ground petting (and probably talking to) it. She likes to travel as much as possible, and unintentionally collects books, vintage dresses, dead plants, rocks, dust, and unfinished projects. You can follow one of those projects here: @travelgoths & travelgoths.com
