What Can You Take Off Your Plate This Holiday Season?
Pamela Alma Weymouth, MSW, MFA
Here we are again! Just as soon as I think I’ve survived Thanksgiving there go the Christmas trees and the sparkling lights reminding me that another holiday is upon us. It seems odd to be celebrating anything while Covid resurges, businesses are shuttering their doors, hospitals are filling up. Still we must put on a good face for the kids and try to find some way to buoy our spirits even if we are feeling Grinchy.
Every year this time, as predicted all of my angsty feelings about all The Shoulds are upon me. I should have the perfect nuclear TV family—but instead I’m a single mother of twin teen cave-people who burp and bicker over my dinner table. I should have already created my beautiful holiday cards complete with requisite beautiful family photos and handwritten personalized notes just like my French grandmother did! I should have taken the Halloween decorations down by now! I should have a perfectly coiffed tree strapped to my car-roof! I should be baking sugar cookies in an apron while running a small empire!
My neighbors (the ones who are not talking to me) have beat me to it again with their blow up Santa sleigh on the roof and their white and red lights nicely strung up around their roof, making my children scoff at my inadequacy. Our driveway on the other hand is full of trash cans, recycling bins and a row of tree stumps I’ve been meaning to ask my sons to move. The Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year’s season shines a light on everything I'm lacking. Just when I was starting to feel kind of okay about my life—the holidays come around and poke at me—in that kind of nudgy way that annoying relatives do. Just as Facebook flashes us the celebratory moments in our friends’ lives (the Hawaiian honeymoon, the ski vacation in your second home, the perfect husband and smiling boy-girl offspring) the winter holidays have a way of jabbing me in the heart.
Don’t get me wrong—I’m happy that you have a beautiful extra house, a doting-handy husband, a perfectly coiffed child who just won the spelling B, the Olympic championship and the soccer scholarship to Yale. I bow down to those of you who are organized enough to get out your holiday cards made, addressed and stamped. I really do open each one of them with joy, appreciation, love, alongside a splash of guilt and insidious envy.
The other day though, it occurred to me that if every new year is an opportunity for change and renewal, then maybe December is such a time too. What if instead of carrying the weight of The Dreaded Holiday Card around like a ton of bricks for 60 days (because i carry it into January too)—what if I simply said NO? What is the worst thing that might happen?
Do my friends and relatives really measure my worth by a piece of paper that gets sent or not sent in the mail once a year? Do my children really give a damn that I’ve spent eight hours and sweated all night again to create a perfect photo montage? Does anyone other than Martha Stewart really care if it’s a handmade paper card, or an e-card or a phone call? Or is this simply some societal burden placed on women by our mothers and grandmothers and some ancient tradition designed to torment the already overstressed supermother? (And while I'm sure there are some amazing men that are neurotic enough to be burdened by this too, I've yet to meet one, but I'd bet he would be great company.)
In my head I have the scolding voice of my parents who hold the practice of gift giving and thank you note writing in such high regard that it has done nothing but left me with a desire to rebel.
What, after all, is the purpose of the holidays? To create connection, warmth and light at a time of darkness. Have we Americans completely lost track of these non-material goals in the flurry and madness of shopping, and decoration frenzy? Sure there’s something fun and magical in pulling out the well worn ornaments and lighting up a tree in our living room. Yes, there’s the delightful myth of Santa (if that’s your thing) and all those big red boxes to be torn open. If you’re Jewish there’s the ritual of lighting the candles, saying prayers, a small gift. Yes, there is power in ritual. But when the ritual has begun to supersede the meaning, that’s when things need to be readjusted.
So this year, I’ve decided to lower the bar. I’m asking myself what I really want to do—and what can I take off my plate. A pandemic is a really good excuse for simplifying your life. Rather than continuing to torture myself—I’ve decided to accept that I will never going to be the kind of woman who gets beautiful holiday cards out on time.
I have other strengths. I can make a mean pumpkin soup even if most of it ends up on the walls. I can make a room full of strangers laugh. I can drop everything and show up for you at the hospital when your kid is in trouble.
That pile of old, unaddressed holiday cards that make me feel like a terrible failure are going to find their way into the fire. I’m going to trust that my friends and close family members know that I love them—and that the weight of that love is not measured in gifts or in cards.
What can you take off your plate this holiday season? I dare you.
Join our Journaling & Resilience Workshop to write and chat about this and more, Thursdays at 11:00 am PST.
xo Pamela
