Yuletide - TURBOCHRISTMAS (mp3)

This band is a project of friends-of-friends who started recording Christmas songs together during the pandemic depths of 2020 and have released an original holiday song (sometimes several!) each year since. Earlier tonight, I got to see them play this song live!

Oh, baby, it’s you-ooo-ooo-ooo-uletide; a little something cozy to come warm me up inside.

The basement venue was packed. My oldest friend, whom I met on the playground when I was five, said to me at one point, “everyone I know is in this room”. Toronto is so dense with connection for me. Before the concert, I ate dinner with a man who I was (re)introduced to a few years ago because he shares a house in the Annex with a friend of mine from Waterloo… but we also knew each other, sort of, when we were twelve-year-olds at the same middle school. He came to the show, and was not the only middle school classmate of mine dancing within 3 meters of me. The crowd was a mixture of strangers, high school friends of my high school friends, their parents, and people whose acne, crushes and aspirations I knew about with preteen intimacy. I don’t know many of them very intimately at present (though some of you read this newsletter, hello, friends!) because I live far away. Across long distances, I find it easy to stay fond, but hard to maintain really confiding friendships. This is a slightly melancholy truth, but it’s one that doesn’t weigh too heavily on me when we’re all dancing until we’re sweating in our red sweaters.

One of my personal rules for long(term/distance) friendships is that, if I see something that reminds me of a friend, I try to immediately text them about it. I figure I’d never mind hearing from an old friend because they saw an odd book title / weird leaf / silly meme that reminded them of me. Do you have any rules or habits that you follow to keep your connections cozy despite distance?

It’s our business to keep the season bright,
Tessa