Promises and Pitfalls: what comes after the holiday season?

It’s January 2nd. I wade out of my heavily blanketed bed half asleep like a mermaid rising from waves to find the shore, find her legs. Then her slippers. The house is cold; we sleep with the heat turned low. I amble into the living room toward the front door, dogs on either side of me, anxious to be set free outside. Our morning ritual.

The Christmas tree stands in the corner of the room: parched and ornamented, lights still on from the night before. Her days are numbered. She was only ever a guest here. The holiday season is like a show on a short run. We will strike the set now. We will take all the decorations down. Pull the garlands from the mantle. Pack up the hollow, emptied stockings. Lay the glitter covered reindeer back in his box. Unpeel the snowflake decals from the front window. Return to normal — whatever that means.

I let the kids decorate this year. It felt like an important gesture given that this is our first year in the new house, post divorce and given the hum of guilt ever-present underneath every thought that surfaces in my mind, every idea, every choice. Are they happy enough? Are they ok? What can I do to make it better? What can I say, offer, buy? I let them put tacky Dollar Store holiday decor in every last square inch of the house. It thrilled them deliciously to have total control over the aesthetics around here for a change. I did a heroic job of biting my tongue all these weeks and holding myself back from making even the slightest adjustment to the crooked stuffed santa doll on the window sill or the tinsel laden jade plant in the hallway. I let it all slide. Now I get to pack it all up.

The holiday season is bookended by two different pitfalls as far as I’m concerned, each one equally dangerous to a fragile heart in healing: expectation at the beginning and finality at the end. The expectation side of the coin has a certain kind of heaviness to it. The constant, ever-increasing weight of everyone’s needs and feelings. The sense of inevitably rolling down to the bottom of the mountain day after day no matter how hard you tried to climb it. You are climbing with rollerskates on your feet and a grand piano on your back. It’s impossible. We are set up to fail by our culture’s expectations around the holidays. There will never be enough under the tree, enough party invites, enough chocolate Santa Claus heads or blinking lights above the garage or holiday cheer to appease what’s hurting and broken and asking for healing beneath the surface. The hustle doesn’t equal any kind of authentic liberation from pain. It just highlights what’s missing excrutiatingly and exhausts us.

Then we are set free from the burden of these expectations by reaching the end of the ride. That should be a relief but it’s not. It never is. It’s depressing. The chance to make everyone’s dreams come true, the opportunity to roll around in the magic of the season, let it cover us and heal us with its shimmering light is over. Poof. It’s done. And January looms like a sink of dirty dishes the day after the party. Now there is just clean up and cold and landlocked life with bored, over tired children who have lost the ability to regulate their feelings or find something non-screen-related to do for 15 minutes.

We were promised something. Did we get it? What was it anyway? Was it a list of presents or was it something else? We were promised that this time of the year is the most wonderful, most special. Was it? And why does that have to end? Why does a heightened sense of loving each other and celebrating each other and honoring each other and being generous with each other and feeding each other and sharing a drink together and lighting a fire together and making heroic efforts to travel and be with each other have to end? Why does it have to end so abruptly? Why can’t the season be about remembering something — something we know we are likely to forget too easily — and then making a promise to keep remembering it? Why can’t that be the promise? Every time the candle burns out I will replace it. I will light it again. It can always be a season of light. We can make our own light. It can always be a season of celebrating each other.

I asked the kids what their New Year’s resolutions were yesterday but as soon as that word left my mouth it didn’t taste right. Resolution. Resolute. Resolve. Must. Should. Have to. We talked about the harshness of all that and decided we would make New Year’s manifestations. What do you want to bring into your life? What part of you would you like to wake and activate? The magic is already in you, waiting to be called home. Like the dogs in the morning, drifting out across the yard, and then returning back when they hear me say their names. We belong to each other. In all seasons. For no reason other than love.