(No. 5) Not? decking the halls
Expression of holidays without the activities that create them
I haven’t been free of something I read in Anne Helen Petersen’s Culture Study circa October, so let’s all be trapped in it now, dear readers.
Halloween is the best time of the year for the ever-stronger goth scratching to break free inside of me and it’s when I go into hyperdrive. Autumn quietly arrives but the 31st looms with a deadline for everything I Need to do. I wake up from dull summer in a sort of jolly frenzy. The issue of Culture Study mentioned previously was about the activity impulse that seems to drive us through the holidays in the US, crescendoing in the fall and early winter.
For the record, a list of commonly celebrated holidays during this time are:
November 1, Christian: All Saints Day (Day of the Dead or Día de los Muertos)
November 12, Hindu: Diwali
December 7-15, Jewish: Hanukkah
December 8, Buddhist: Bodhi Day
December 21-January 1, Pagan and Wiccan: Yule
December 25, Christian: Christmas
Now that the winter holidays are here (officially), we have bulky lists of things to do, to buy, to see, to hope for. I’d argue we could pivot away from that bulk. Not entirely forgoing the holiday routines, there’s already a movie about how semi-impossible that is1, but reassuring ourselves that time can be magical by definition and/or by expression.
I urge you to follow the photo description link and read the whole piece about sprawling holidays and celebrations harking back to cravings for something to shift or alter our everyday lives, but see the focus section below, specifically the last sentence.
Expression through doing and, its pair, expression through being are fairly amorphous. Possibly, there is a built-in time devoted to each mode from ancient life that we resist against, never quite mastering, loosely partitioned as: the spring of planting, the summer of growing, the fall of harvesting, and the winter of surviving. Or maybe there is one mode that suits certain people best, although it’s glaringly obvious which is more beneficial to operate in now, despite the time of year or circumstance.
That is, doing. Living in a state of doing isn’t any less morally valid than the mountain-bound monks of being from too-far imaginations and/or cultures. It rewards us to do. One of the five love languages is gift-giving. Giving as in letting go, as in surrendering. The tenderness of that is glittering.
Expression through doing can be meditative and therapeutic and productive like hanging lights, washing dishes, or riding a stationary bike. There’s a quote from Thich Nhat Hanh’s book The Miracle of Mindfulness that I think about every time I do my-own-personal-brand of dreaded chore: the laundry.
“If while washing dishes, we think only of the cup of tea that awaits us, thus hurrying to get the dishes out of the way as if they were a nuisance, then we are not “washing the dishes to wash the dishes.”
What’s more, we are not alive during the time we are washing the dishes. In fact we are completely incapable of realizing the miracle of life while standing at the sink.
If we can’t wash the dishes, the chances are we won’t be able to drink our tea either. While drinking the cup of tea, we will only be thinking of other things, barely aware of the cup in our hands.
Thus we are sucked away into the future—and we are incapable of actually living one minute of life.”
Especially around the holidays, doing serves us well. It’s a lot easier to hang the stockings for stockings’ sake. There are tasks to complete and things to buy. It’s the magic of the holidays we must uphold with our doing. More on this later, but maybe the doing is the thing that defines holidays apart from regular time.
It’s faulty though, being through doing. Even if you’re applying this mode of living just in times of emotion, or theme, like the holidays or a vacation, doing is limited by bodily ability, financial constraint, and/or behavioral prejudice. We can’t all give physical things. We might resort to giving thoughts, prayers. Those can be unconjurable to some. What goes out is defined by circumstances of deficit. And then what response is there in a community of doers? No result, no doing, nothing done.
Rejection lies hidden in the fabric of the doing like a coiled animal. But in this case, what is rejected by inaction isn’t a person or a thing, it’s a holiday. It’s an idea.
The pair of doing, expression through being, has three tenants, which according to the referenced article are described as:
Observation
Contemplation
Devotion
There isn’t a reward for operating in this way in modern life—in fact, we could launch into the laziness debate (here’s a video explanation for those who prefer video content), shortly summarized as a concept created of puritanical ideals that worthiness derives from action.
Inaction is a highway for ungratefulness, resentment, and impassiveness. That last sentence wasn’t a question or a statement. I don’t know what it was, correct or incorrect, it’s often realized. It’s important to designate that inaction isn’t the vehicle for these emotions, it’s the road.
Expression through being provides an opportunity for these ANTs (automatic negative thoughts) in the same way it carves out space for resting and evaluation. And it’s especially suitable for this time of year. The winter solstice on December 21st will be our longest night here in the northern hemisphere.
Yule, recognizable from the term Yuletide, is a Germanic festival rooted in Pagan traditions (yes, you read that right) that spans 12 days after the shortest day of the year—the winter solstice. On the solstice, a yule log is lit and the fire is tended to all night to ward off unwelcome spirits (and thoughts) during the darkest and thinnest night.
The darkness during this time may be a harbinger of the very things we’re so practiced in evading. Quiet and stark realizations of the thin night are accompanied by pain that comes with stillness and the literal pain of being in a frozen and dark world. We cling to each other during this time. We are all we have when we’re done with doing.
The Yule festival is a celebration of the returning sunlight and it’s spent together, hunkered down, in thanks and joy. It’s quite a happy time despite the themes of mortality and has morphed, not so accidentally, into modern-day Christmas.
I really thought this darkness quote I’ve been thinking about was Ursula K. LeGuin but it’s not… it’s Harry Potter (ha). When Dumbledore and Harry are in the cave in the Half-Blood Prince, Harry sees—spoilers maybe—an enchanted dead body submerged in the dark lake and Dumbledore says:
“There is nothing to be feared from a body, Harry, any more than there is anything to be feared from the darkness. Lord Voldemort, who of course secretly fears both, disagrees. But once again he reveals his own lack of wisdom. It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more.”
(I don’t want to hyperlink this because it’s J.K. Rowling who, of course, hasn’t the best track record of being firmly in allyship. It’s Harry Potter, you can find it.)
But the fear of the unknown speaks to what we’re (or maybe just I am) scared of by laying down the mode of being, especially this time of year. What will be left? I celebrate Christmas so Christmas for me—really WHAT will be left without the gingerbread houses and greenery? If we craft the magic of the holidays by decorating and ice skating, cooking and wishing, then shifting away from those activities is as good as eliminating the holiday. Forgoing the idea of it all.
One of my favorite parts of being in Chicago right now is peering into street-height houses and apartments at night and seeing the decorations and life inside. I can report with slight accuracy that The Santa Clause (1994) is the movie of choice this week and that most people have already put lights on their trees but still lag on the adoring ornaments, to come possibly closer to the 25th.
When I was growing up and even still now, Christmas at my parents’ house is an absolute wonderland thanks to my mother. Paintings are framed in fluffy red bows and banisters adorned with garlands and lights. There are little trinkets everywhere and all the rooms have different themes: gingerbread in the kitchen, snowmen in the bathroom, reindeer in the living room, red trees in the dining room, and on. Now that I’m no longer living there, I search desperately in thrift stores for all of the little *things* that I didn’t realize made up Christmas. And I’m dismayed by the price and labor of it all.
Prop stylist and burgeoning commentary creator, Paige Wassel made a video about Christmas styling, one of many styling videos for Christmas in a sea of home decor content, that stuck with me for its advocacy for less and more traditional decorating routes.
This thought train continues to chug along with my mantra of “what I have already is the best candidate for what I need.” I’m trying, really trying, to buy less. In 2023, I will embark on a no-buy-new year, save for the items in grocery stores like food and batteries. But buying less around Christmas time is always a particular struggle (obviously). How can we feel the holidays without the doing? Without the gifts that make up the season? We live together, we give gifts.2 It's isolating and taboo not to participate.
I don’t know what the answer to this discussion is and I don’t have any recommendations or proclamations.
I do know that fall came and went without apple picking. I still felt the crisp rain and smelled the leaves.
I did, however, head the committee (of one) to go to the nutcracker ballet this year because it holds a certain Christmassy mysticism that I can’t deny myself. I noticed that I might have craved it so much because it leans heavier on the reflection side of entertainment, being without speaking, only movement and music. My honey bear and I had a great time, coining it our Night Out.
I’m holding the observation-contemplation-devotion principles very close these days especially. They help me consume less, scroll less, watch less, think less about my appearance, and generally turn more outward.3
They also help me feel less dread and shame for being a naturally more withdrawn person. Embracing the fact that expression through being is a way to be is monumental for healing my doing-complex. I’m embracing the restfulness, the introvert, the little mouse. I would never scold an animal for sleeping or hiding, nor do I scold myself.
Not speaking as much or as loudly feels comparable to not doing as much as quickly as other people manage to do. Both of these are the crux of my being-forgiveness. Unless I’m masking for a part-ay or something important for work, I’m a naturally restful and quiet person. I’m enjoying Christmas by feeling Christmassy when I light a candle stick and adding allspice into everything and missing the local Christmas markets in favor of making time to read in bed.
This is a challenging time of year to accept being as equally valid as doing, but it’s also a great workout. Everyone will be everyone. We’re all different. But I want to be reassuring and mildly comforting in saying that the magic of the season will shine (ironically, in its darkness) no matter how many boughs of holly we deck—or don’t deck—the halls with.
I’d like to leave off with a poem from Victoria Adukwei Bulley’s book “Quiet.” Available to listen and hear with interpretation via On Being in Pádraig Ó Tuama’s charming accent.
Not quiet as in quiet but
as in peaceful /
as in slow to anger /
as in shy /
as in sulking or sullen /
as in nice /
as in clean, tree-lined streets /
as in well-resourced libraries /
as in good, outstanding schools /
as in not much new /
as in no news is good news /
as in the war is over; has been for decades now /
as in early to bed / curled up with a book /
as in the newborn is sleeping /
as in TV barely audible /
as in subtitles /
as in subtext /
as in someone should’ve done something /
as in don’t just do something, stand there /
as in could & should but wouldn’t /
as in well the British are / so polite /
as in placid /
as in placated /
as in nuanced / complicated /
as in careful it’s a conflict, not a siege, a conflict /
as in objective /
as in both sides /
as in well behaved /
as in safe /
as in too quiet /
as in almost silent /
as in almost no sirens /
[Fin]
P.S. I tried to break up my paragraphs more in this piece to aid in super-fast-lightning-reading. It’s also a bit shorter in length. If you like this or dislike it, feel free to let me know below.
Hidden Brain has a great episode about holiday gift giving and the sheer toil of it all
The benefits of turning outward remind me of the book Braiding Sweetgrass (available on Libby!) and the thanksgiving address within, which aligns each thanksgiving to the trees, the animals, the winds, and more with reciprocation and oneness.