When it isn't Merry Christmas
Christmas Eve is either a joyous celebration of new life, hope, and peace on earth or a stark reminder, in the dead of night, that your sun has yet to rise.
I've spent most of today and a lot of the past few days wondering why I don't "feel Christmasy," and a fair bit of time feeling guilty that I haven't "done Christmas things," and even more energy lamenting that I am running out of time to make Christmas magical in a household with these humans I've been sort of raising and learning alongside. Everything in America feels bleak and tense and breaking and that isn't so much political as it is holistic and I think it'll be a Christmas miracle if I wake up in the morning and, just once, don't look into my own eyes, in a mirror, and wonder how I got so tired and where that sun spark of light and fire is. And, from all of my conversations with so many of you, it isn't just me that's feeling the feelings that I am feeling and there is solidarity in this pain but. Can we find solidarity in celebration?
Regardless of your religious beliefs, Christmas is a time of great giving - lives and loves and presents and time and effort and forgiveness and ending and beginning. No matter how not like Christmas this Christmas may feel, let's try to search for those strings that connect us. They shimmer, you know, even in the dark, when light hits the strands that connect the thinnest places between us, there lights a glow.
Christmas 2019. We're hours away. It's ok to sit in a dark room and breathe deeply into your own lungs your own Christmas miracle - today you're here. Today you're a gift. It's okay to take breaks from the overwhelming moments of chaos and family and connection and it's really truly okay to mourn what might have been as much as you embrace that you have this, here.
It's ok to sing Taylor Swift or Coldplay's new album because you're tired of carols and it's ok to forget to move the goddamn elf and then to feel guilty and then to feel sad that your kids didn't even notice or care because the world is a little more jaded, colder, stark, and lonely and. It's ok.
Enter tonight and tomorrow with open hands and hearts. Chin up, above water, deep breaths. Celebrate in solidarity. Recharge. Set down what you can set down. Give yourself a try or a break. Let us do all we can (or exactly as little as we want) to end this year well and then to leave it where it belongs, in a hard and unruly past. And let us celebrate beginningagain because there is always a crack of light that dawns at sunrise.
Meet me there. I'll be there, waiting. I hope you can be too .
