The year of my divorce, I moved into my first solo apartment in over a decade on December first. Christmas was imminent, yet felt like a lifetime away. I wasn’t particularly excited about its approach, but wasn’t bothered by it either. It just was. One night I strolled to a gallery opening where I found a hand-painted ornament that dared its reader, “don’t f@#k with my fa la la.” It was the perfect sentiment, so I purchased it, along with a foot-tall stick tree and one string of lights for support and accompaniment, respectively. It was the first holiday in my adult life when I realized there isn’t a right or wrong way to celebrate. Not everything has to be imbued with meaning – we can find peace and joy in the small, the unexpected.
In talking to friends, I learned that these joyous micro-moments are universal. Some I’d never considered as anything unusual because, through years of friendship, they had normalized in my mind as well. For example, the Key West friend who each year completely decks her tree, in glorious abundance, with rubber chickens. Another local friend pulls out all the stops for her annual “Bloody Merry” brunch on Christmas Day. Pajamas and formal gowns are equally encouraged as the group noshes on homemade latkes (a nod to her Jewish roots) and downs glasses of OJ and bubbles.
Others find solace and familiarity in adapted rituals that evolve over the years. A friend who moved from New England to Key West knew it was futile to attempt to recreate the snowy days her kids experienced growing up in Maine. There simply wasn’t a substitute for skiing all afternoon after opening gifts in the morning. So, rather than dwell in nostalgia for the classic winter that first season, she gathered her family to go play a game of tennis at Bayview Park, then head to White Street Pier to look for shells. After watching the sunset over the ocean, they loaded into their decorated Jeep and took a spin around the island to check out the displays of holiday lights. Ten years later, tennis on a balmy December day and an afternoon shell-hunt feels like Christmas to this foursome.
All the unconventional gatherings around a rubber chicken tree, drunken silliness at latke brunches, and tennis games reinforce a holiday ideal that actually feels fairly traditional – family. Regardless of how we celebrate, or who we consider as family, we tend to universally seek out peace and comfort around this time of year. Solace can be found in a quiet winter night by a fireplace, or in a night at home eating Chinese takeout with an obscenity-laden tree in the background. Family can take the form of our traditional families-of-origin (moms, dads, kiddos), or of adopted goofballs who share your love of the slightly eccentric and off-kilter. The holiday season amplifies the good and the bad in our life, which throws the things we miss into sharper focus. But rather than getting stuck on the places we no longer occupy or the friends to whom we’re no longer connected, look around your home, your neighborhood. In all likelihood there’s a rubber chicken tree, a tennis game, or some latkes not too far away.
