Finding A Way Through Yuletide

It’s Christmas morning. I’m six (or nine or twelve). My sisters and I must wait to enter the living room with its lit tree until my father has started a fire and gone to town to pick up my grandmother. We scurry from bedroom to kitchen, where my mother brews coffee and makes hot chocolate, dutifully averting our eyes from the living room, loving the suspense. Finally, when all is in readiness, we enter the room together, the children to see what unwrapped gifts Santa has left (a “walking” doll, a bicycle, skis); my parents to watch our jubilation, to pat themselves on the back for making magic happen again. I still love anticipation of what’s to come, more than the event itself, instilled in this tradition of waiting.



It’s Christmas morning. My children are three (or five or eight). They aren’t allowed in the living room until parents—up late putting toys together and drinking wine by firelight, my favorite part of the holiday—have lit the fire, set the coffee perking, made the hot chocolate. (There are seldom grandparents, they live far away.) We wait in anticipation to discover together what magic has happened in the night.



It’s Christmas morning. The children are ten and fifteen. Their parents live in separate houses. I’ve put lights on a spindly ficus tree in my apartment and wait alone for my children to come from their father’s house. There is no magic. Only sadness, loss, and change.



It’s Christmas morning. I wake my mother, wait for her to slowly dress while I make coffee, for my sister to arrive. There are no unwrapped Santa gifts, no one to avert their eyes. If it’s the alternating year, one of my children and my daughter-in-love are there, or will arrive later. I have never been with my older grandchildren on Christmas morning. Later there are the younger grandchildren some years, when there is magic again, not created by me. It’s good, but not what I thought would be in my emerging elder years; pieces of me are missing. It’s a melancholy season.

I was going to pass this year on adding my words to the annual newsletter posts about how hard holidays are for so many people. I changed my mind. (Note: I speak of Christmas here because that’s my tradition. Please substitute your own observances.)

A reader of my November issue wrote, “Your wisdom gives me hope as I begin my journey as a widow (ugly word).” A friend wrote that even though it’s been years since she has been near family, this year has hit hard, missing the ones who are gone as well as the ones on the other side of the country. She adds, “Good thing I have a toolbox of practices that keep me from falling into the pit of despair.”

The season is hard for many reasons, (arguably) primary among them because it’s not how it used to be in the brief halcyon years. We want to freeze time on the one or a handful of years when everything was—if we’re lucky—some version of perfect. But children grow up, move far away; people grow old, have health issues; people die. We may not even be alone, we may be the cozy elders at the head of Norman Rockwell’s Thanksgiving table, but it’s not the same. And for so many of us elders, that picture does not reflect our life. We feel labels more deeply than at other times of the year: widow, divorced, single, childless. We long for a feeling out of reach: happy, whole, traditional. We just want it to be January, all of this behind us for another year. My friend writes in her newsletter, “No matter how content we have become with our changed circumstances, the holidays shine a blinding light on loss.”

“What are your tools?” I ask her. “The same ones that got me through the pandemic,” she says. “Move my body (dance!). Get outside. Connect with friends. Prayer and meditation and playing with tarot. Write. Make art.”

I mull over my own tools. Rather than try to echo the traditions I thought would be (which is an epic failure anyway, such as having Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner with friends, which made me more lonely in the past), I’ve created new traditions for myself. Lunch with a friend, with whom I usually only meet for coffee, in the days before the holiday. Yoga on the Solstice, and a tarot spread; spending the shortest day without electric lights, other than the tree and the light rope over my windows, embracing the darkness. In fact, I’ve declared the Winter Solstice and New Year’s Day my favorites of the season—rather than Christmas Eve and Day—days not connected with expectation and memories. When I’ve been alone on Christmas Day, and I haven’t wanted it to be like every other solo day, I prepare a simple meal I don’t have any other time. (My tradition has been a Reuben sandwich, cranberry chutney, a special dessert.) I light a fire and feed it all day. I may only change out of pajamas to go for a walk in the woods. I do another tarot spread on New Year’s Eve and/or Day, looking back at the year past, and ahead to the one to come. I might start a new jigsaw puzzle. Wrap up the year in words in my journal. Make a gratitude list. Watch schmaltzy holiday movies.

My mother is gone now. There are no longer alternating years for my daughter’s family, they stay in Seattle and welcome me at their house on Christmas eve. A plate of cookies, a glass of milk, grass for the reindeer is left on the coffee table by grandchildren. I have happily assumed the place of the grandparent. I am grateful that what once was has taken its rightful place as happy memories rather than a spotlight on loss.

This year, thirty years after I divorced and all that was and I thought would be ended—and yes, we need new words for divorcee and widow; I use solo, it refers to what I am, not what is missing—I realize I am no longer sad. I’m enjoying the holiday month, not dreading it. I even kind of miss my Reuben sandwich tradition! It’s like aging, I think, learning to accept all that is, as it evolves—which is not to minimize new grief. It takes as long as it takes; in my case, nearly three decades. But with tools, I no longer feel I am missing a part of my Self. I have created my new normal, for now.

As my friend Joanna says: “May it be so for you. May you also embrace the grief and the warmth of Yuletides past. May you always know your loved ones have your back, be they ancestors or still in the body. May you always know you are loved.”

And so it is.

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Who or what are you missing this Yuletide? If you are feeling loss, what are your tools? If you have made new traditions, would you share them? Leave a comment and read what others are saying.

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You can read my priestess friend Joanna Powell Colbert’s beautiful Substack post, There is Fog, and the Scent of Cedar, and Candles to be Lit, here, along with her tarot spread for the Yuletide Season. Maybe you’ll begin a new tradition for yourself!

*Artwork by Elliot, age 5.

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