Everything about the holidays this year is wrong.
The holiday season begins with my birthday—mid-September—runs through Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and ends abruptly at midnight when New Year’s Day becomes January 2nd. Each day is celebrated according to its traditions and has all the appropriate and unique emotions associated with it. It begins with the joy of pleasures known or unknown and familiar faces and the thrill of new adventures. The holiday ride takes me through thrilling taboos and profound gratitude and the quiet-but-impossibly-pure ecstasy of loving embraces through winter’s sublime chill. How else could it all come to an end but an all-night burst of relief ushering in a fresh start?
“Relief’s a funny word for it,” you say with some confusion. I of course must agree. Relief is the kind of release that comes from escaping the slowly-tightening stranglehold of tension and mounting anxiety. Why, then, does it seem perfectly intuitive to use it in such a positive context? Well, there’s no getting around it: along with the joys and crackling moments of peace by the fireplace and reminders of sincere love and the warming glow of mirth come the stresses of making sure every little thing is in place, of doing the best we can to take everyone into consideration, of pleading silently to no one in particular that those members of the family won’t try to tear each other apart this year. We are tense because we want as many things as possible to go well and we’re afraid they won’t. New Year’s Eve brings along that sweet relief because it almost invariably does go so well. Those few hiccups here and there don’t even matter because the food was just savory enough—maybe just a little bit too sweet, too, but no one was going to complain about food being more to their liking—and the gifts thoughtful enough and the clothes enticing enough for it all to be worth the effort.
Just for a moment, forget all that. Forget the stresses, forget the joys, forget all of it. What I like most about the holidays is the warmth in my chest. I’m a sentimental man and the temptation to focus this warmth on my heart is great, but to do so would be saccharine and dishonest. The gifts and the joviality and the familial intimacy are all so wonderful they make my heart ache and they may well be the cause of that warmth, but the warmth itself is what imbues my holidays with a soft and glorious glow. Enamored though I am of the cold weather, I can withstand winter’s sublime chill only because that warmth is there, allowing the frigid winds to bite at my face but guarding forever against the cold’s callous intrusion into my core
I say again: everything about the holidays this year is wrong. I walk around and feel winter’s cold sting everywhere. Furnaces and fires may make valiant attempts at thawing me, but it is only on the outside I am so affected. My chest is filled with icicles and melancholia and I have not yet discovered any remedy. This wretched year has put my life on hold in ways that not even those favorite films of mine that are overflowing with the Christmas spirit (I’ll let you guess so long as you don’t guess It’s a Wonderful Life) are only coaxing tears from my eyes. While I do have other grievances, they seem petty and almost insignificant in comparison to this. For example, the food has been perfectly tasty even if it is broken up because it was stuck to the pan. That wouldn’t matter if my chest weren’t frozen on the inside, but here the minor frustration is made to feel like an outright disaster.
Is there anything from this wretched year worth salvaging? I dare not speak it, lest it be taken away from me somehow in the week leading up to the new year. I’ll just contemplate and hide away whatever I can find—protect it from this year’s surely-toxic death rattle. In the meantime, I’ll do—no, overdo—what little I can in the hopes that it will burn away some of this frost. Excuse me now while I indulge myself with a tricorne hat and a fur coat and indulge others in the name of Santa Claus.
With care,
~ Grigori