Lights in the Dark

How to find the bright, shiny center of an often challenging season

I don’t know exactly when I fell out of love with Christmas. Like so many other kids, Christmas was my favorite holiday growing up. Even though our family wasn’t really religious, we always celebrated the holiday, and usually with gusto. My mom, an accomplished interior designer and lifelong crafter, built a collection of extremely beautiful and interesting Christmas decorations, and every year would deck our halls with a gorgeous Victorian-inspired tree, sometimes multiple trees, garland-wrapped banisters, hand-stitched stockings hanging over the fire place, and candles in the windows. As small kids, we’d pile into the car every December 21st or so and make the long drive to Missouri, to spend the holidays with our grandparents and cousins. Later, we’d stay home and enjoy cozy family Christmases, joined by aunts and uncles and friends. In college, I relished the holiday break, and nothing brought me more joy than making the long drive from Ohio to upstate New York, anticipating the beautiful sight of our house on a snowy hill, all lit up for Christmas, knowing a warm, crackling fire would be waiting inside.

Even though we didn’t go to church, we had traditions and practices tied to the holiday that were sacred to our family. My mom and I were both musicians, and we were both always busy at the holidays performing with various musical groups. We played a lot of music at home, too, and no Christmas has ever passed at my family home that didn’t include at least one night of caroling with my mom at the keyboard. There were certain movies we made a point to watch every year, like It’s a Wonderful Life and How the Grinch Stole Christmas and that truly, truly awful Rankin-Bass Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer television special*. We loved baking Christmas cookies in preparation for my parents’ annual holiday party, and helping my mom address and stamp the envelopes for the hundreds of Christmas cards she sent out every year. During the break from school, my dad and I liked to go for nighttime walks in our neighborhood in the falling snow. And, as long as our Christmas tree was up, you could find me most evenings curled up on the sofa next to it, reading a book in the glow of the twinkly lights.

Many of those treasured memories and practices are still a part of my life now, as an adult. But the feeling is a little bit different, and I’m not entirely sure when the shift occurred. I don’t think it was just one moment - maybe it was a gradual part of growing up and growing into myself.

I know that a part of it had to do with affirming my status as a non-Christian. My parents both grew up in Christian churches, and especially on my mom’s side, participating in church was a massive part of their lifestyle growing up. When my parents went to college and headed out on their own, they kept the values they’d learned from growing up in a church, but never maintained a churchgoing practice or took us kids to services unless we were visiting my grandmother, who was a church organist for most of her life.

For my upbringing in a non-religious household, I am actually really, really grateful. I think I’ve always been pretty open-minded and curious when it comes to religion, as a result. I can see a ton of parallels and similarities from religion to religion, more ways people are alike than different. Not practicing a religion myself made it easier for me to stay aware and spot inconsistencies and hypocrisies, too. I find myself curious to learn about other people’s beliefs, even when I disagree, and as an adult I’ve developed practices that borrow from spiritual teachings from Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, Taoism, and more.

Perhaps the main source of my disenchantment around the holidays came from getting older and joining the workforce, and coming to understand capitalism and seeing Christmas as a giant cog in the wheel of consumerism. (I think we can all acknowledge that many of us do end up spending an awful lot of money each year at Christmas, don’t we? even when we don’t have the money to spare?)

I also noticed, as a non-religious person, that it can be tough to navigate life - all aspects of it - in a society that’s dominated by Christianity. From living in a variety of regions of the country, and settling down for my twenties in the south, I found myself spending time with more people whose values really vastly differed from mine and not being able to find middle ground. I noticed how non-Christians aren’t given the same space and time to celebrate and observe their faith as Christians are. I felt the pressure to convert to Christianity, even in places where religion doesn’t belong, like at work.

It all started to feel less magical, the whole Christmas season. And the more little bricks fell out of the wall, the more glaring the light of truth that shone through seemed to me. The truth about Christmas is, for most of us, it’s a huge struggle to feel and sustain joy and cheer and gratitude for the better part of a month, every single year. At great cost, I might add, to our mental health and our bank accounts.

But, the thing is - I love the winter. I love the solstice. I love the dark, introspective months of the year, the way the entire world and all its creatures find some way to rest. We’re storing up our energy, letting our creativity start to flow, planning, dreaming, getting ready for the next big thing. And I love, love, love this quieter time of the year.

I want to feel the old magic, so I still keep up some traditions from my childhood, and have developed my own along with my partner (who’s Jewish, and mostly not practicing these days) and my friends. I decorate the house, with twinkly lights and pinecones and snowflakes and evergreen, and a Christmas tree, as well as a menorah. I place candles on almost every surface. I buy and wrap gifts. I send a few handwritten holiday cards. I sing along with the Hanukkah prayers when we light the candles for eight nights. I plunk out my favorite Christmas carols on my digital piano with my headphones on. I watch my annual lineup of favorite holiday movies.

(As a side, I will never, ever not cry over the ending of It’s a Wonderful Life and then immediately watch SNL’s The Lost Ending of It’s a Wonderful Life, where vengeance is unleashed upon the evil, manipulating, lying, scheming Potter.)

I’ve been trying to reconfigure my relationship with the whole season. Because the thing is, as much as I love the wintertime, and it is a respite for me each year, it is dark. Spending so much time inside - both physically and metaphysically - is hard at times. It’s a lot. It can get scary. It can get sad. And that’s why the holidays can be a dangerous time for some folks who are predisposed to more of that. We need lights in the darkness. We need a little sparkle to make the long night lovely. We light candles for Christmas, but then we extinguish them, and spend several months in the dark, with no spark, no joy, no magic. Why?

Let’s face it - the world is a dark place. I think now, more than ever, a majority of people have been feeling that, some just for a few months, some for several years now, as conflicts grow scarier, kindness becomes rarer to witness, and struggle seems like the tie that binds us. We need a little bit of light to sustain that darkness.

And more than ever in my life, I’m finding I don’t judge or begrudge people chasing that light, finding light wherever they can, grabbing on to it and clasping it tight.

So. We pick and choose the pieces of the childhood traditions that feel the brightest and shiniest to us as adults, and we carry them forward. We look for new traditions to incorporate into our annual celebrations, practices that honor the lives we’re building with our chosen friends and family. We let go of the things that cause more stress than they’re worth, ideally. We talk through the discomfort with someone who can really hear us - a friend, a therapist - and don’t let the stress pile up. We remember to pause, and practice gratitude for all we have, even when things are hard. We seek out opportunities to give to others, to share what we have so we never find ourselves in excess, and our neighbors don’t have to want for anything. We love our people as best we can.

That is how we find the bright, shiny center of Christmas.

xo,

*That seemingly wholesome Rudolph movie sure doesn’t land the same way as an adult as it did when we were kids…