Let Christmas be the beginning…
In modern North American culture, our annual holidays have become goalposts for the retail industry. You know the season is changing not by the color of the leaves but by the re-merchandising of the shelves far in advance of the actual date of significance.
Big box stores push Christmas trees at Halloween. And Thanksgiving barely gets any spotlight because the day after overshadows it. Turkey Day feels like a footnote with a buffet by Black Friday.
Here in South Mississippi we are just days after Christmas. Everything red and green is marked “clearance” while everything pink and red is taking over like kudzu (or purple and gold for Mardi Gras on the Gulf Coast).
And why do we literally buy into this nudging of holidays earlier every year? Because the long nights, the dreary skies, the biting cold… we need the next thing to arrive quickly for reassurance that this circadian claustrophobia will end. Something else on the calendar means hope on the temporal horizon in the shape of chocolate hearts. And shiny, new purchases counteract the sting of a stark period.
But with the solstice marking astronomical winter (just before Christmas in our hemisphere), there is already promise as each stretch of daylight gets a minute or two longer. So why let the short gap between Thanksgiving and Christmas be a cacophony of commercialized stress when we could slow it down and really savor autumn? What if we let the spirit of giving and miracles linger wistfully beyond December 25?
The cure to this rushed passing of time is understanding why major traditions happen when they do by embracing their roots in the rhythms of nature and honoring their relationships to ancestral cultures.
Here’s how western winters used to go and still do in some parts of Europe:
There was Advent. It’s not just a novelty countdown of surprise candies. This was a period of reverence and fasting for some.
Christmas Day kicked off the good times with celebrations of feasting and gifts. These are the 12 Days of Christmas topping out with the Twelfth Night festivities all the way through the first week of January.
So instead of tearing down garland, chucking your beloved tree, and banning nostalgic ornaments to the attic, maybe let it all be for a few more weeks. Let the holiday optimism strengthen your resolve into the new year. Leave the lights to brighten a path through the most dreadful January nights and sloppy February days.
No matter your rituals or beliefs, each of us could do with a little tempered brightness through the darkest season. And we will all emerge more revived and steady and brilliant for spring.