Are you worried about being able to get it up for Christmas this year? Does it feel remote and impossible? Normally, around now, we are all in battle mode: lists, dinners, parties (only one of which we look forward to), popping into shops in lunch breaks, gathering missed delivery slips, ordering the foodstuffs that make up our rituals – ham, smoked salmon, a certain kind of Brazil nut chocolate. We are weary but adrenalised. We are resentful but simultaneously embracing the whiff of martyrdom because we are a bit weird like that.
This December? Well. There is no adrenaline and there are no parties – unless you are a Nottingham University student who’s just been arrested at a rave in which case… I am surprised you are reading this.
We are, this December, entirely self-propelled. None of that knackered Christmas momentum that has built up throughout the year. Other things have built up this year, but not that. And so we find ourselves attempting to assume a kind of quiet diligence. But it’s slow-going. We are, most of us, deadline junkies, and this Christmas deadline doesn’t feel real. In fact, not much feels real. Except the weariness. That does.
We see the need to make it special. Just because it’s different doesn’t mean it can’t be special right? Maybe MORE special? Maybe MORE magical? Oh great, here comes the perfection stick, emerging out of the void, for us to beat ourselves up with.
This year has been hard and Christmas – ruthless fucking Christmas – will tend to magnify. To hold a mirror up to your mood. So go gently. Tell the people you will or won’t be seeing that you’d like to go gently. Think peace rather than joy. We are depleted. We have shrunk to fit the space. Christmas must be about respite. Low expectations. Minimum drama. A lot less Zoom. And the distant thrum of hope – because soon it will be Spring. And we might all blossom once more…
