1. A Christmas Flexible Temperament

Life on the winter holiday spectrum

Ornaments from my childhood that I don’t hang on a tree but display in an old silver bowl that was my late mother’s. She would approve of this display.

It’s Christmas Eve, so I’m thinking you’re probably in the throes of cleaning, cooking, wrapping, packing, traveling, or going back to the grocery store once again for that other thing you forgot so you can finish that dish in time for the something at 5:00.

Or maybe like us, you’re having a quiet Christmas. It’s good and fine with me, and I hope it is for you too.

In fact, my head is so full of natural dyeing—weight of fiber, exhaust baths, iron shifts, indigo overdyes, and how all of it differently interacts with cotton, linen, silk, and wool that it’s hard for me, honestly, to concentrate on much else.

Because I’m so obsessed right now, I’ll use the limbo that is the week between Christmas and New Year’s to accomplish as many samples as I can so I can lift my head from the natural dye dreamstate I’ve been in by the beginning of the new year—and hopefully return to the ability to think about more than one thing.

Welcoming Back the Sun

For most of my adult life, I’ve considered myself “Christmas-Flexible.” I can go all in, I can drop out, I can do something in between. Some years I spend weeks making hand made gifts, other years, I barely send out a card.

Since Christmas is a tradition, being “Christmas-Flexible” is not really that popular of a stance. Most people either love Christmas or hate it but I’m not in either camp. People generally prefer you to be one or the other.

Last year, when a drunk driver drove a giant 10’ hole through J.’s workshop building in early December, the entire month was a scramble to close that hole and I completely forgot to do anything else I’d said I’d do. So grateful that holiday didn’t involve flying anywhere or cancelling plane tickets or pretending everything was okay.

At this point in my life though, the Solstice is much more my jam. A big part of me wishes that the secular cultural holiday experience revolved around that instead of Christmas because we humans seriously need to remember our connection to the earth and the seasons.

Marking this time of year with a huge cultural celebration that’s about feasting, being outside at night around bonfires, sharing romantic messages about welcoming the return of the sun—and perhaps teaching children that life is a rhythm and a cycle and not an arrow shooting out like a cannon from our birth to our death—might help rearrange our imaginations for the better.

But now that I’ve written that, I realize there’s already a lot of that type of vibe and activity underneath and interwoven into the dominant culture’s expression of Christmas. Especially in the town where I live. So no need to get on my high horse about crowds, commercialism and social pressures, afterall, I’m Christmas Flexible!

And because I love shiny things, I’m a sucker for decorations. This year I actually managed to get lights up outside, after literally years of wanting to. It’s sounds silly, but I’m thrilled about it. And on Sunday I put up my favorite indoor decorations, which almost no one sees, but whenever I walk into our main living space, the lit up fake “birch” trees, my collection of antique-y hanging stars, and my overflowing bowl of childhood ornaments make me smile every time.

In the meantime, my own little public Christmas tradition is to go online and urge people to listen to Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory recording. It’s a quiet, poignant story of a couple of family misfits in 1930s Alabama.

It’s an old-fashioned, very human story that reveals a particular time and place. This video is a recording of Capote reading it. You’ll probably cry at the end, but in a good way. Nice to listen to as you’re cooking.

Feel the Feels!

Being Christmas-Flexible means I’ve got space for all the feelings. So feel free to share yours—the joy, the grinchiness, the importance of family, the loneliness, the upset with the crass commercialism, the nostalgia, the please-tell-me-when-it’s-over. Whatever it is—leave a comment and share where you are on the Christmas spectrum or however you feel. I’m good with all of it.