Christmas Rituals
I am taking this week off of publishing my book and I missed last week due to symptoms completely knocking me out. This week I wanted to share a post I’ve been able to write around our holiday rituals.
I have never spent a Christmas alone. I don’t say that with any judgment or opinion, just stating a fact. There have been plenty of Christmases where I have been achingly lonely, surrounded by people who were family in name but not in spirit.
Until my kids were born, that is how all of them were with a few exceptions. One exception was a Christmas early in my marriage that was very sweet. I made stockings for Kendall and me, stockings that we still use 20 years later. That year Kendall bought me a self healing cutting mat and a rotary cutter for my sewing. It was an enormous and thoughtful splurge. I had only begun sewing a year before, but loved it. It was just the two of us and it felt like such a relief to me to finally be away from my biological lineage, as well as Kendall’s and all their abusive behavior. Even though Kendall wasn’t on board, I was really excited for us to create our own traditions together. While I didn’t know it, what I was trying to do was form an attachment with him and establish ourselves as a family.
What it became the beginning of was me creating meaningful traditions for myself during the holidays. It was disappointing, lonely and hurtful but it was still meaningful. I was giving voice and life to my needs. When I had kids, I finally had people in my life that wanted to return connection, appreciated and thrived on the rituals I had already established and each new one as well. It was unexpected to me but this Christmas magic I had been cultivating by myself had a place to land and flourish.
After having kids, I decided that I wouldn’t spend any time with people who put me down. I was unwilling to let my kids learn that behavior, see their Mama treated like that and put them at risk around emotionally abusive people. My life and theirs were something I began to protect and breaking away from the normalization of holiday turmoil, anguish and pain brought freedom and life.
Over the years, the rituals grew and evolved as we got to know ourselves and evolve as individuals and a family. Using a Martha Stewart pattern, I made 24 little advent calendar stockings when my oldest son was a baby with that same mat and rotary cutter Kendall had gotten me many years before. They started out as just decoration and have evolved into so much more. Now, every year we are visited by a different elf from the North Pole. The elf comes and leaves our kids letters and sometimes ornaments or other little gifts but most importantly the elf leaves them love. At first, it was me writing the letters and then Kendall joined in and this year because I am unable to it is just Kendall. Every year a new elf tells the kids about themselves, brings stories and adventures from the North Pole but also asks about our kids and tells them all the things they love about them. One day they will know (our oldest probably already does) that we are the elves.
On Christmas Eve our family used to go play in the snow. When the kids were little it was sledding. Finn used to ask us over and over again if he could go skiing or snowboarding. He had this little rocker board, he’d put on his snowsuit and goggles and for hours he would play “snowboarding”. When Oliver was 3 we decided to get night ski passes (cheaper) and Kendall taught us all to ski. We all fell in love with skiing and it became our family’s favorite way to play together and express our love for one another. It was natural that sledding evolved into skiing.
Our rituals continue to evolve. There are many more holiday rituals –the kids and I taking the month of December off of school, spritz cookie making, baking of all sorts, knitting everyone a hat and sweater each year, a new set of matching pj’s handed out on Christmas Eve to name a few more. These rituals that I’ve created for our family are an offering that nourishes and holds us. They ground us, bring a sense of magic and lightness. Many of the memories now are bittersweet as we long to do the rituals we can no longer do. We can no longer play in the snow, I cannot knit or bake and because of how much harder school now that we are all sick we can no longer afford to take a month off. We miss our rituals in a deeply painful way because they were meaningful to us and because we need the nourishment they provide now more than ever.
