Deliberate December

The holiday season is upon us. For most people, it hits like a blizzard tornado, and they find themselves spit out in January dazed, exhausted and bruised. And I understand, because I was like that for many years.

Now, with my focus on deliberate choices, I am looking at a different type of December. I will state outright here that I am not a traditionally religious person, but I view December, with its various snowy light-centered holidays, as a time of reflection, planning, and rest. The earth is asleep at this time as the darkness grows and then starts to wane.

So can one approach December’s holidays with a sense of deliberate action?

Activities

December is packed with activities. School concerts, church events, seasonal parties, and the holidays themselves all conspire to take up time. It can get overwhelming and leave you more than a little frosty!

Decide which events mean something to you. Skip the rest.

For instance, my daughter has a home concert from her recent Japan tour; we will attend that. The December piano recital will be skipped. The company holiday party we’ll attend, but I will skip the holiday luncheon at the office. I’ve also decided to say no to the requested performances on the 8th, 22nd and 24th, while keeping the one on the 15th.

Food

Holiday food. So much of it. And so much of it we prepare and serve “because we’ve always done it.”

Here’s the thing: the holidays should be a celebration, not a punishment. What a relief to know that you can choose foods you like!

In our family, that means a simplified Christmas with turkey breast in the crockpot, mac and cheese instead of stuffing, and no sign of that gray gelatinous stuff called green bean casserole. It also means that New Year’s dinner is usually steak and shrimp, done on the grill.

Relationships

In this era of social media, many people think of posting as maintaining relationships. It’s not. Relationships are not about looking at someone else’s life, but a concerted effort to engage with another being.

I’ll be honest – if someone expects me to be on social media to keep up with their life, is it a relationship or voyeurism? Relationships are two way.

At this time of the year, I reach out deliberately and send cards (yes, with stamps!) to those I am thinking of. I do send personalized typed long letters to relatives who are too far away for us to visit (typed because my handwriting tends to be illegible). Those whom it is too much effort to email, well, it doesn’t make the deliberate cut.

Traditions

I saw a great snarky cross stitch pattern the other day: traditions are peer pressure from dead people. While I do believe that some traditions are a great way of connecting with the past, traditions should not be followed for their own sake.

My father’s family celebrated with pickled herring eaten after midnight mass. While it was tradition in the part of Germany his father came from, there was no way on earth I was going to stay up past midnight to eat vinegary fish. On my mother’s side, it was tradition to put the nisse in the tree (that’s what morphed into elf on the shelf, folks). Our nisse has always been hidden deep in our tree.

And there are the new traditions. My daughter and I have listened to the radio serial The Cinnamon Bear for years. This is our last year of doing this, as she will be leaving for college next year. But it is something we do together that we both look forward to.