xmas during covid

I know a lot of peo­ple are vary­ing de­grees of dis­ap­point­ed be­cause ei­ther there will be no cel­e­brat­ing in per­son or their fes­tiv­i­ties will be sig­nif­i­cant­ly cut back. There are many dif­fer­ent ways to feel about the hol­i­days in even the best of times and how­ev­er much you do or don’t like this time of year is en­tire­ly with­in your right to feel that way.

I’ve nev­er made any at­tempt to hide my opin­ion of it. For all those of you who tru­ly do love this time of year and look for­ward to it with great an­tic­i­pa­tion and ex­cite­ment, I am gen­uine­ly sor­ry things are the way they are. Hope­ful­ly you will be able to re­sume ob­serv­ing the hol­i­days nor­mal­ly this time next year.

That be­ing said, I’m fuck­ing lov­ing this.

You’d nev­er know it was Christ­mas if you lived in our house un­less you looked out­side at our neighbor’s lights across the street. We haven’t put up a sin­gle dec­o­ra­tion and it’s not for any rea­son oth­er than that we are ex­haust­ed by every­thing that has hap­pened in the past
*runs the num­bers*
1,400+ days,
es­pe­cial­ly the last 346 of them.

We just sim­ply couldn’t be ar­sed to give a dim­madamn about  A N Y  of it.

I fi­nal­ly just took down and put away the few Hal­loween dec­o­ra­tions I had up LAST WEEK­END. For some, dec­o­rat­ing brings them a sense of calm and hap­pi­ness and peace.

And that’s re­al­ly im­por­tant. I’m get­ting all that from pre­tend­ing this year that there’s ab­solute­ly noth­ing spe­cial about De­cem­ber 25 ex­cept that it’s Fri­day and I don’t work on Fri­days any­way.

In a way it feels like Christ­mas lasts a third of the year and it just nev­er stops. Dec­o­ra­tions hit some stores as ear­ly as Sep­tem­ber. This is due to a cy­cle of sup­ply and de­mand be­cause the stores want to squeeze every last pen­ny out of con­sumers and some peo­ple just re­al­ly can­not wait to start putting up the dec­o­ra­tions they took down less than eight months ago.

When I was kid I can re­mem­ber stores not dec­o­rat­ing for Christ­mas un­til at least af­ter Thanks­giv­ing, if not the ear­ly morn­ing of De­cem­ber 1st be­fore the doors opened.

Black Fri­day now lasts the en­tire month of No­vem­ber and some­times into De­cem­ber. And there have been way too many times I’ve gone into a store on De­cem­ber 26 and there is al­ready Valentine’s crap on the shelves, but that’s an­oth­er top­ic al­to­geth­er …

Christ­mas hon­est­ly hasn’t felt very spe­cial or fun since I was a pre-teen, and it’s tak­en years of slog­ging through oblig­a­tion af­ter giv­ing into pres­sure and guilt due to the sake of tra­di­tion for me to re­al­ize and ac­cept that.

It has noth­ing to do with gifts or make be­lieve or mon­ey, ei­ther. I’m sure I’d prob­a­bly feel dif­fer­ent­ly if I had kids or I were re­li­gious but I don’t and I’m not. I’m not a grinch or a miser or a Scrooge, I sim­ply just don’t care.

My ide­al hol­i­day is throw­ing our cock­tail par­ty ten days be­fore Christ­mas, hav­ing an in­ti­mate din­ner with my hus­band on Christ­mas Eve, and host­ing an open house Christ­mas Day so any­one who wants to (fam­i­ly, friends, cowork­ers, neigh­bors) can pop in for a few min­utes for a warm drink and a lit­tle gift.

No moun­tains of presents, no house full of fam­i­ly who stays for 10–12 hours, no huge feasts that take hours if not days to pre­pare, none of that. It would be more an ob­ser­va­tion of win­ter and sol­stice and shar­ing our good for­tune and cheer. And that’s it.

I’m the least stressed I’ve ever been in my adult life on De­cem­ber 16, and it’s be­cause on Christ­mas Day Aaron and I will sleep in, spend the day in our pa­ja­mas, eat a man­age­able meal in the qui­et of our home, and sign on for a Zoom chat once or twice dur­ing the day to watch some peo­ple open their gifts. And that’s it.

This pan­dem­ic is hor­ri­ble and trag­ic and dis­gust­ing, and the trau­ma we are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing from this will be with us the rest of our lives. But one twist of fate in it all (cru­el for some, wel­come for me) is that I get a much need­ed break from cel­e­brat­ing the hol­i­day sea­son, no ex­cep­tions.

And maybe that will make me miss it a lit­tle more and be a lit­tle more ex­cit­ed for it next time. Maybe.

 

—emi­ly duchaine

Flom­mist Emi­ly Duchaine lives in the Pa­cif­ic North­west. She likes to drink mead, learn about sharks, and lis­ten to the Talk­ing Heads. She pre­tends to be a pro­fes­sion­al busi­ness­woman most days. Copy­right © 2020 Emi­ly Duchaine.

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