Today's weather feels as tempestuous and indecisive as my internal mood. A strong wind that completely fails to clear the humidity blows through periodically bringing with it raindrops that evaporate before they hit the ground or are incorporated without relief into the general mug in the air. I can't face the outdoors today knowing I'd have to wear sunscreen and suffer the sensory burden of it along with the moist sweat inducing air and the taunting wind. Today is definitely a crafting indoors day so I find myself online with the kids looking for Christmas inspiration, longing for the oft-depicted chilly weather and a cosy fire.
What does Christmas mean when you are in the Southern Hemisphere, aren't Christian, reject consumerism, and are grieving the death of the one person you begrudgingly celebrated Christmas for?
In a patriarchy smashing master move last year I declared I was done with Christmas, done with the emotional load, done with the pressure, done with the stress, done with the expectations (some admittedly self imposed) that I somehow make this a memorable time for my children, honour my sustainability values, accommodate everyone's dietary and sensory needs, and connect with a LARGE extended family using their love language of gifts that require financial sacrifice.
It all requires a great deal of energy. It's walking a tightrope to bridge worlds and remain generous of spirit towards very different people and a lot more conformity to societal expectations than I usually practice. It's exhausting but I do it because I genuinely care about these people and it's important to me that we keep these corridors of connection open.
Christmas has always been far more give for me than it has take, not in terms of gifts, but in terms of finding common ground. Everyone else's idea of common ground with me seems to be their backyard or maybe the wild part of the yard where they chuck greenwaste. My common ground is another planet requiring space travel level logistics and much preparation.
I was done with Christmas last year and rather than pull out during an inevitable end of year mini meltdown I thought I would do it in a managed and mature way and informed my immediate family on boxing day. My partner insisted that he still wanted to do Christmas and would organise it (except for the small matters of the kids gifts, the cooking, the yearly calendars, the Christmas craft, the catchups, our gifts for each other, the food shopping...) but after a full year of gentle prodding declared as December dawned that there was no money and he had no time to do anything. C'est la vie.
Earlier in the year my mum was diagnosed with lung cancer and after a brief illness very suddenly died in October. There won't be one last Christmas with her. There won't be any of the Christmas traditions we had, cheese platters, ridiculous deserts, and saying that this will surely be the last Christmas for her elderly lumpy bumpy blind and deaf dog Candy (as in Cane) who came to us 16 years ago at Christmas. When we went through her things we found a small bag of gifts for her grandchildren which I gave to them straight away. It seemed too morbid to wrap up and gift them on her behalf beyond the grave.
Christmas has felt very wrong to me for a long time. The idea of a midwinter feast, and gathering indoors to connect with loved ones and look forward to the new year sounds appealing. Putting a big holiday smack in the middle of the heat and hustle and bustle of summer seems ludicrous. We have been tentatively celebrating the summer solstice but with young children are yet to completely severe the tie to the cultural juggernaut that is modern Christmas. We find ourselves waiting for our Christmas plums to ripen, gorging on strawberries, enjoying our garden flowers and revelling in tentative swims in still bracingly cold waters while simultaneously planning our decadent Christmas Eve hot chocolates and singing Let it Snow.
The air hangs thick today with humidity but at least it's a welcome reprise from the suffocating air of stress and facade of niceties hiding a stretched band of pressure and climatic sentiment after a difficult year. Life has largely moved on in mostly normal ways after coming to a crashing halt earlier in the year but this holiday which should feel the epitomy of normal now seems anything but. Seeing our consumption driven society's veneer of permanence peel back has obviously shaken people very deeply. A holiday that, for all it's religious tradition and sentiment, has largely been reduced to wanton consumption surely requires more thought in an age where suddenly the Emperor's lack of clothing has been revealed unto us and we are aware of how precarious the global systems that drive these commodities really are.
I never want anything physical for Christmas. My partner and I both expressed a need for new sandals so have unceremoniously gifted each other a pair and have been wearing them for weeks now. Recently I've had to make room in my life for my mum's things, stuff too sentimental to let go or things that were just beautiful that I wanted to give a home as mum, ever the sentimental collector of curiosities, did.
It's hard to know where to draw the line. I wanted to take everything at first, finding myself upset as I washed away the dust from things knowing I was washing away her skin cells. I wanted to take nothing, what use was anything when I just wanted my mum and the stuff was a painful reminder. I haven't yet found places for much of this stuff and feel like I'm drowning in possessions and it's tipping over an already precarious balance between artful clutter and hoarding. The knowledge that soon more stuff will arrived unwanted and unchosen is a little anxiety provoking.
As the wind picks up and in the time it takes to write the humidity drops a little and my children emerge hot from playing outside asking for an icy cold smoothie and the craft box to make symbols of Northern hemisphere winters and to put the A Christmas Carol audiobook on. This is a complete hodge podge, I don't like it, and bah humbug, but it isn't all bad. If there's one thing this year has given me it's the validation that forging my own path is the only way for me. Something is only new and different at first before it becomes it's own tradition. Although some things never change, amongst mum's stuff in my home is Candy the dog, still alive, ready for another Christmas, surely it will be her last.
So beautifully put, my friend. I felt the same about my Dad's stuff. It was an emotionally fraught time as I wasn't, and am not, speaking to my mother, so the trip for his passing and funeral were rushed, with two very young children to care for. My family asked me if I wanted anything, but I couldn't think of anything; I was numb.
There's no harm in leaving those decisions for a later date. Now that time's passed, there are things I wish I'd asked for like Dad's old printing press, which was sold, things we'd actually get some use out of and remember him each time, things that evoked precious childhood memories; a childhood that was too painful to contemplate at an already overwhelming time.