blacking out this holiday season

If I could, I’d love to take a long restful nap, starting just before Thanksgiving and going straight through to January 1st. Not only would I wake up in a new year with longer days and more sunlight, I’d spare myself all of the pressure and swirl of the holiday season. 

I’m not over here being the Grinch, it’s just that we pack so much into these 30-ish days that we can’t savor any of the true meaning of it all.

We cook, eat, drink, and reflect on what we’re thankful for.

We shop, we ship presents, we worry about delivery delays and the supply chain.

We stress out at work to wrap everything up, only to log-off for just a few days.

We navigate airport security lines, travel toiletries and TSA, and holiday traffic.

We gather with friends and family. Hopefully we laugh, maybe we cry.

Then we reflect again, we make resolutions, and just like that, we’re thrust back into real life. 

Of course there are moments to be remembered, but generally for me, it feels like I’m fighting a riptide, trying to not get swept away in the chaos of it all. Putting it bluntly: I’d love to skip right over all of that. 

This feeling starts to creep up every year when Thanksgiving approaches, and I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes the holidays hit so differently now as an adult than as a kid.

I grew up having everything I needed and most of what I wanted, but I grew up sheltered and ignorant of how the world works. I was scared to be anything less than perfect and followed rules to feel safe. I thrived, but at a cost to my personal identity.

As an adult, I’ve found that being with family during the holidays makes me confront the difference of perspectives and values that I was taught to believe, and the ones I have taken on for myself, informed by my lived experience. While walking among the first snow flurries of the season this morning, I realized that I’ve been performing “holiday mode” for the last few years to deal with this growing disconnect. Starting as soon as Thanksgiving rolls around, I emotionally blackout, I hold my breath to get through it, and finally exhale the moment the New Years ball drops. 

Mainstream culture manipulates us into thinking that there’s one way to experience the holiday season. This idea is reinforced by social media photos of smiling families in matching PJs on Christmas morning, in commercials for cars with big red bows, and the premise of an unattainable type of relaxed, effortless holiday-season ease.

On my walk, the phrase “simplify and center” kept showing up in my thoughts. What would it look like to simplify my holiday expectations? What would it look like to center my feelings and move through the holiday season in a way that supported them? 

It’s unsettling to feel caught between what was, what is, and what will be, but there’s also something so clearly freeing about knowing that I’m not phoning it in.

Maybe because of that, this will be my most authentic holiday season yet. If any of the above felt familiar to you, I’m hoping that this is true for you too. 

Get this week’s playlist here.

Happy Hanukkah to my friends who celebrate, see you all next Sunday. 

Meghan