December: are you thriving or surviving?

It is time to pull Holiday decorations out of boxes, decorate the house inside (dusting, vacuuming) and outside (hello ladder and extension cords!), find the gifts, make 4 dozen cookies, prepare the meal and get the eggnog out. If you have kids, make sure to move The Elf around as well. If you are religious, it's time to celebrate and reflect in the context of your religion, it's time to connect with deeper spiritual meaning of the season.  It is time to possibly greet guests into your home. It is time to buy gifts, pack gifts and share the giving with others. It is time to host, to enjoy, to celebrate, to be shimmering with joy wearing an ugly sweater, and it is time to exchange cookies and gifts and cards surrounded by sparkling lights and buzz and excitement and all the ho-ho-hos and fa-la-la-la-la-las.

Or is it?...

There are women who quietly wait for all of it to be over. Who are done with Holidays before the season really starts. Who really want just peace and quiet with a blanket and cup of tea. It isn't about escaping. It isn't about being "depressed". It is about the need to retreat, to go in. These women push thru December, and quietly dream about January - "the dead month" when everything slows down and (finally!) allows to be still, to sit under a blanket with a cup of tea, with no demands, no questions, no calls, no requests. The deep need for stillness is stronger in Winter that in any other season. 

For years I had one leg in the first scenario, but as I kept getting older and older, I started finding myself in the second scenario more and more. Holidays became tasking, ho-ho-hos and fa-la-la-la-las seemed jarring and artificial (not to say fake) and the whole Spirit of the Season was becoming... overwhelming.
It all was slowly creeping in with - of course - a sense of guilt:
how is it that I feel that way about a season that should be so joyful?
How is it that it all bleeds onto loved ones that appreciate Holidays, and that I have no problem sharing joy with any other time of year? 
And why does it all feel just exhausting?...

Sure, I was able to identify some issues: the fact that the season starts in summer with first Christmas decorations, or at least first order catalogs pushing Holiday stuff in August. The fact that the season REALLY starts days or even weeks before Thanksgiving - making it more than a month-long affair, that may exhaust bigger fans of Santa Clause than I am. The fact that gifts buying frenzy does not stop until late, late hours of Christmas Eve - which was a cultural shock for me, first time I witnessed it (also: if you didn't think about a gift for me until 9.00 pm the day before - don't bother). The fact that the frenzy of buying will be followed by the frenzy of returning and that the season sometimes feels like it is only about buying doesn't make things easier. It requires intention and active, continuous work to offset this commercialism and dig deeper. 
I could identify these things, I could talk myself thru them, but there was something else that I just wasn't able to easily explain.
... Until I read this paragraph in "Woman Most Wild" by Danielle Dulsky
"A woman struggles deeply when the ways of the social world contrast sharply with the rhythms of nature. The Witch in winter faces a powerful social challenge; while all the world is bustling to commemorate various holidays with gift giving and candlelit perfection, the natural world is bidding you to come to bed. The winter solstice marks the longest night of the year (...). The rhythms of winter are slow and dark."

The book made a small mark on my personal journey; it was not the best match with what I was looking for at the time, but I am eternally grateful for this book if only because for this fragment.
I realized that the chasm between my inner need to retreat and be still - like a seed, cozy under a blanket of leaves in Winter - and the sparkles and buzz and cheer and activity (not to say frenzy) of the Holidays, adorned with non-stop blinkings and lights and merries and brights was so big it was impossible to reconcile.

If I wanted to enjoy and celebrate this season (and I wanted) without feeling drained and depleted, I needed to rethink it.
Over the years, I purged a whole bunch of things that I used to do/or and associate with this season.
More is less, they say, and trust me - more is less.
No radio during Holidays.
No shopping malls.
Wild mushrooms soup and fried fish for Christmas Eve because it brings loving memories of my Grandmother - but all other food-related traditions that I carried from childhood got mercilessly purged. And I mean mercilessly. (That alone reduced cooking and prepping and kitchen time by more than 80%)
We introduced winter-based, nature themed decorations in addition to traditional Holiday decorations.
And most importantly, I am making point to "de-clutter" this time: quality time with family of course, but as little "to do" as possible otherwise.
Plenty of time for quiet time together.
Time to fill hours with reading. 
Time for Arts & Crafts that were neglected during the year.
Hot tea steeping in a teapot.
Sleeping in.
Quiet journaling-time in the morning before the world fully awakens.

It feels like Holidays.

It also feels like Winter.

It feels restoring.

Happy Holidays, however you celebrate. 
Have magical season filled with everything that feeds your soul and Happy New 2025 Year.

 Photo by Ilia Usmanov on Unsplash