Simply Having
a wonderful early christmastime
It is 5am on November 2nd and I’m sitting in the dark listening to Christmas music. I am also contemplating putting up my Christmas tree. I know, I know. It’s too early, there’s Thanksgiving yet to contend with, Halloween is barely over. Save your arguments against my early Christmas. I’m not listening.
It’s been a hard year for me. I had the rug pulled out from under me in January and I’ve been spiraling since. Winter was dreary, spring felt non-existent, summer weighed me down. Now it’s fall - arguably the greatest time of the year - and I am still feeling the residual grief that comes with the end of a relationship. But I am trying. I am trying so hard to come out of this spiral. Jumping from Halloween straight into Christmas music helps.
I find great comfort in this time of year. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday; the warmth, the family gatherings, the food, the expressing thanks and gratefulness for each other, it all makes everything feel so perfect in an imperfect world. But I tend to take in the season as a whole, Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year wrapped up together as eight weeks of cheer and bliss before the harsh reality of winter sets in.
I think my penchant for starting Christmas early began when I was very young, when the Sears Wish Book would arrive in early November, a catalog filled to the brim with all sorts of toys and gadgets, basically everything a kid could want Santa to bring them on Christmas Eve. I’d grab a pen and circle everything in the book I wanted - which amounted to almost everything - and hand it off to my mother. It sometimes took an entire week or more for me to go through the Wish Book because I’d spend a ridiculous amount of time daydreaming about each toy and what I’d do if got it. A huge dollhouse, a bike, a children’s typewriter, a guitar. By the time I was done with the book it would close to Thanksgiving. In my mind, Christmas had already begun.
So here I am in very early November singing Christmas carols and eyeing the corner in my living room where the tree will go. I have no Wish Book to peruse, but I do need to make an Amazon wishlist for my family, which is almost the same thing. Maybe gone are the days where I would excitedly ask for Legos and dolls and art sets, but I can still put together a list of fun stuff and get in the spirit.
Truth is, the Christmas season makes me feel good. How cliche it is to want to deck the halls and go on about joy to the world, but it does wonders for my soul, and I need that so badly. Last year I put my tree up on November 1st. With the pandemic weighing down hard on us, I needed the comfort and joy that having my tree lit up in the living brings. This year it’s an impending divorce weighing on me. I’ve been feeling lonely, jaded, cynical, and down and out. What could be wrong with gliding into the holiday season a bit early if it’s going to make me happy? I know you think I’m rushing things in a year that’s already gone by way too fast, but there really is no schedule for joy. Joy finds you in the weirdest places and if that place is winter wonderland, who am I to deny it?
So I will drag my tree out of its storage space this week. I will listen to my Christmas playlist. I will create a wishlist for my family. I will bask in the glory that is the holiday season because those lights on the Christmas tree will wash away the despair that a 4:30 darkness brings. The Christmas songs - even the sad Phoebe Bridgers ones - will spark a light in that place in my brain where my seasonal sadness resides.
The weeks and months after the holidays are so bleak and feel endless. Stretching the holiday season to include all of November gives us extra days to revel in the feel-good spirit these days bring. Maybe I’ll still be lonely. Maybe I’ll still feel my heart ache. Some Hallmark movies and “Wonderful Christmastime” on the stereo might not change that entirely, but it will feel - even if just for a little while - different. It will feel hopeful. It will feel warm and cozy. Who would want to deny me that?
Happy holidays, for they have begun.