About The Holidays...

Here’s the thing: Is there a world in which we stop the gifting of things?

Hear me when I say I love a thoughtful gift.

LOVE.

I also feel an anxiousness around gathering a not-so-small fortune of gadgets and gizmos aplenty for my people when the holidays roll around. This year in particular I feel conflicted about the amount of work I’m doing in order to provide for our family, and how that work has hindered my thoughtful consideration of gifts for the people we love. When I say “gifts,” what I really mean is “things.” I conveniently forget the gatherings I’ve facilitated in my home for some of our closest friends. I ignore the hours of preparation and careful attention given to the food and wine, the candle scents and the flowers chosen. It’s easy to negate the experiences I create because their impact is written in the tucked away places. They resurface in memory recall and joyful conversations, which is exactly where I want them to resurface. And these are the things that mean most to me every single time, but we cannot hold them in our hands, so somewhere in my brain I reason they aren’t enough. Which is a damn shame, because no one I care about actually cares about the stuff we hold in our hands!

So why do I feel the need to give a bunch of stuff to my people? Why isn’t it sufficient to spend our time together, or to give our words in a beautiful card, or to experience the magic of the quotidian with each other? It is more than sufficient for me year ‘round, save for December. 31 days out of 365 enforce a false narrative on me, and they’re REALLY good at it. I buy in, hook, line and credit card number.

I’m writing these things because perhaps you feel the same anxiety. Perhaps you, like I, could use the reminder that 31 days out of the year do not get the power to diminish our intentionality throughout the other 334. Lizzo may have introduced the world to a new title (you know, the one based on a DNA test), but I know for a fact that December is not 100% that b*tch. So I refuse to treat it as such anymore.

This year, I’m remembering the intentionality behind my time and money throughout the whole of 2019. I’m remembering where I chose to spend it. I’m remembering how much fulfillment came from those choices, and how the people in my company felt the same. This season I’m giving the gifts we hold in hand only when they make sense and not in equal measure because my relationships are not of a conveyer belt nature. They are dynamic and nuanced and I won’t treat them all the same this one time of the year. I won’t feel guilty for not having spent enough or feel like a failure for not having gone full-fledged consumer. I will give the homemade jam from the local farm. I will buy a copy of a book that made me think of someone, and I will give it to them and only them. I will write my heart in Paper Mate Flair Ultra Fine pen on hand-picked cards and proudly give those as the gifts they are to my people. And I will make the remainder of these December days submit to my audacious disregard of consumerism.

JOY TO THE WORLD. And don’t spend another dollar unless it causes you to sing.