While I was preparing to teach my yoga class today, I found myself reflecting on what a mixed bag of emotions the holidays can bring for so many of us. For some, this is a time of loneliness and despair when everyone seems to be rubbing their togetherness or abundance in their faces. Some meet the season with ambivalence and don't care whether they participate in Hannukah or Christmas or New Year's Eve or Kwanzaa or nothing at all. For some, it is the wrong cultural time of year for celebrating or ritual. For others, celebrations like Thanksgiving are a form of societal gaslighting that tell a pretty story of peace and breadbreaking to glaze over mass slaughter and genocide, by violence or disease: mass murder perpetrated on their ancestors by people who look soemthing like me. For the Christian religions, this season is largely a celebration of beliefs about the baby sent to save them. Some people just like it, hate it, or even love or loathe it, and they don't even really know why.

In my lifetime, I have known Jews who celebrate Christmas just because it is fun, and their friends include them. I have known Christians who go to church, but don't get into the material gift giving, decorating, or secular adaptations of Santa Claus. I have known atheists who love the holiday season and write songs about it, Wiccans who celebrate the Winter Solstice and decorate their trees with Yule balls filled with herbs, moss, and dried orange slices, and agnostics who couldn't wait come to my house and paint Christmas cookies and drink glögg, which may as well Yule balls of warm wine, sans moss, of course.

There is so much deeply engrained human history in these celebrations, and although I am not a fan of the egregious, unapologetic, promotion of rabid consumerism that has developed over the years, it still feels like an ancient and magical time for me. Most of us know from the studies of anthropology, history, and archaeology that Yule celebrations long predate Christianity, and what we now refer to as a "Christmas tree" was already a symbol of those celebrations when it was -let's, in the spirit of the season, go with "adopted"- by more comparitively modern sects. Even in ayurveda, winter is the season of the kapha dosha: a time for cozy rest and feeding our families with warm stews and hearty meals, cooked with all the love we with which we can imbue them. In my mother's country, the dark winter was, by way of Italian legend, broken by the light of Sankta Lucia's crown of candles, and still is today in candlelit processionals. The twinkling lighted candles on trees eventually gave way to incandescent and then LED electric bulbs, but the symbolism of light in the darkness is a theme that has been in our collective generational history through many ages.

It feels right to spend my time in front of my fireplace next to my twinkling tree full of family relics and symbols of my mother's country. I love unboxing all those physical memories every year. Through the antique family heirlooms, the construction paper covered in glitter and glue, the woven straw julbocks, and the painted dala horses, the Christmas tree tells the story of my family. It is a way of celebrating where we have come from and where we are going in the coming year. During this time, activities like this are happening all over the world in the many countries that celebrate this season. I love the idea that so many people suspend their constant busying and their hatefulness in favor of togetherness and ritual, everywhere and all at once. It isn't perfect, and it isn't for everyone, but a thing of wonder rarely is.

I have to wonder sometimes if people think, simply because I still love this time of year so much, that I must have been living some kind of charmed existence all this time, devoid of the kind of pain that tends to make people bitter and cynical or turn off permanently to the idea of using this time to celebrate and give. I wonder if they think that my holiday memories are all of joy and kisses under the misteltoe and my family getting along harmoniously around me. I wonder if they think I am naive, foolish, inexperienced, or childish. It would be a logical conclusion and certainly the simplest. The fact of the matter is that some of the worst moments of my life have transpired around the holidays, and I have spent this season in the murky depths of grief, many times over, with only those twinkling lights to break the darkness.

Among many other smaller traumas, my father died just before Christmas, two days before my daughter's third birthday, when he was only three years older than I am now. That event also proved to be the beginning of the end of a previously close and dear friendship. Years prior to that, my best friend from birth to 17 died suddenly in October, rendering the entirity of the season dark and difficult to bear. The year before her death, the only person who had truly befriended me in high school moved to Singapore for her father’s job at Christmas. I was unable to get out of bed with the worst flu of my life. I hardly remember saying goodbye to her in my delirium, and might not have remembered at all if there hadn't been photographs. Three, possibly even four, major, gutwrenching, heartbreaks have happened between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I have spent Christmas crying alone and wishing my family was nearer to me, thinking I might implode if I wasn't hugged or held or even spoken to kindly. I have spent most of my New Year's Eves awkardly stuck alone and in the middle of crowds of kissing couples, staring at the ceiling and wishing I had just stayed home. Only twice in my middle-aged life was I part of one of those giddy, midnight pairs. On the worst of those nights, the person who had broken up with me on the anniversary of my dad's death in December- over Christmas tree shopping, of all things - was already among the throngs of date-laden partygoers. It had been the first day I was able to get out of bed and put real clothes on, and I had had the misguided notion that getting out would lift my spirits, never guessing we would end up at the same party. It took me months to recover. (Note: my family has moved most of our Christmases to New Year's weekend these days, thank goodness!)

It would be so very much easier for me become hard, cold, and cynical, give up caring and giving, and stop making the effort to put those magical twinkling lights on the tree or the eaves of my house. I could spend the hours of time it takes to make the glögg and the cardomom buns and the pepparkokar and the woodburing fires and painted sugar cookies and extravagantly wrapped boxes on grumbling and complaining about the commecialism and cloying, saccharine movies and music. I could look down my nose at people for being "stupid" or "naive" enough to "buy into it all." I could yell "bah humbug" or let hearing the same song for the fortieth time in a week get under my skin. (There are a couple that will do it, by the way. I am not immune.) It would be so very much easier to permanently close my heart for business, build a brick wall, keep people at a safe arm's length, and choose to let those experiences steal the possibility from my life, but then I wouldn't be me.

It wouldn’t honor my story. For every sad tale I could tell, and believe me: there are plenty more than I have chosen to share, there are as many or more moments of joy. My daughter was born two weeks before Christmas, and that tiny baby, who we were then able to fit into a Christmas stocking was married this past weekend before Thanksgiving. The moment I knew what kind of man her (then boyfriend) husband would become happened on Christmas morning, when his teenage boyhood pride didn't stop him from singing Frozen karoake for my littler one. Another Christmas morning, I was happily large and round in my fuzzy red sweater, watching my first child open presents with my second wiggling in my belly. In another few years, my eldest was sprinting around the side of the house, ringing the doorbell, and leaving the kitten I had secretly adopted on the porch, complete with a note from the elves, for her excited sibling. That kitten was our cat, Clawdia, who is now essentially my witchy little familiar and possibly my closest friend. I have had countless wonderful experiences celebrating Thanksgiving in the forest with my family and the whole ensemble of people I only get to see that one time a year. I met my cousin Sofia and her husband Fredrik over New Year's weekend, just a few years ago. We drank champagne on my couch in front of the fire, and the two of them marvelled at just how many very Swedish decorations were packed into their American cousin's house. In the years following, I received pictures of their baby and their wedding, and soon their toddler, and then pictures of them all in snow on Christmas day. The last time we spoke, not too long ago, another little one was on the way, anticipated to arrive in time for a celebratory Jul toast. Just this past New Year’s Eve, while celebrating our belated Christmas, my family and I drank our glögg and akvavit (I passed on the salted anchovies and knäckebröd) and attempted to sing a very fast, very old, very not-English, Scandinavian drinking song, and the resulting caucophany of jibberish still makes me laugh aloud.

I remember years, when most of my family and friends were still alive and would gather at our house on Christmas eve. I, still unknowingly on the cusp of an awkward adolescence, was learning to play the piano. Our family friend, a concert pianist, would come to the house and play my piano with the top open, sending his entire repertoire of Christmas music drifting into the night. The neigborhood streets were lined with white paper-bag luminaria, glowing yellow-white and warm n the darkness, sometimes persisting even through the rain, and the pedestrian onlookers would stop and stand in front of the bay window. The sparkle of the miniature white lights on the fir tree and the white haired, bow-tied man at the piano created a live, musical postcard that made it impossible not to linger. It was so astoundingly jolly and beautiful that I couldn’t even allow myself to feel embarrassed by my clunky, blundering attempts at stringing together enough notes to form a recognizable tune. I was only awed and inspired, and all I wanted to do was that.

I remember the year I got my first bike, little-girl-sized and printed with images of Strawberry Shortcake on the white seat, with red and white streamers coming from the handlebars and training wheels I was scared to take off until my father made me brave enough to try. I remember the years when our little Spanish stucco house was so packed full of my parent’s friends that they would have to line up on the orchid porch my father had built just to get in the door. I remember a big jolly darkly bearded musician with a Latin rhythm in his words who called himself Pepe -sometimed Pepe Le Pew, when he really wanted me to laugh- who would pick me up and swing me around until I was squealing and full of unstoppable giggles. I never knew he was an extremely talented musician, who had played with the likes of Jaco Pastorius. I only knew he seemed love me and that he made me laugh. I remember the years before my father became so sick and the year he gave me my first guitar, after he had already been in treatment for four years. He had already lasted longer than the woman who was treated at the same time, who had died in the third year and left two small children behind, and I remember how thankful I was that he was still with us, even when he insisted on grumpily refusing to smile for pictures, as he was known to do. I remember the year he started to become so much more ill, and I remember watching him with my daughter, so happy that he made it long enough to know and love her. I remember the first Christmas my little sister joined us and how excited I was have her there in the morning after Santa came. I remember the year that I silently promised I would be good and begged for her to be healthy and well when my best friend’s little sister, also the child of my mother’s best friend, who was sick and premature and wearing my baby doll’s clothes, died in what I now know was a NICU. I was terrified, but I was also overwhelmed with love and gratitude that it wasn’t OUR baby and felt newly-avowed protect her from harm.

I remember building gingerbread houses from scratch with my grandfather, who spoke several languages and insisted on constantly correcting my grammar in his thick accent, often while humming along and “conducting” the TV orchestra’s rendition of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker with his pinky. He indulged my dancing around the living room in my pink tights and tutu and my dreams of being a sugarplum fairy, so long as I didn’t break anything or us “me” when I meant “I” or “I” when I meant “me”. He fed me warm, home-made, extra-spicy gingerbread with melted, salted butter: the scraps of the hand cut walls and roof of the house we would spend hours building. I learned how to make icing, I learned how to dance, and I learned how to speak and write properly. Later, as a teen, I learned how to discuss complicated philosophical and political topics and how to break down words by their latin roots, suffixes, and prefixes over those gingerbread houses. I remember the first Christmas without him, too, but the many years of memories of his handmade wooden Scandinavian decorations, gumdrop rooftops, and his real gifts of time and conversation are immortal, for at least as long as I am alive. He gave me his gifts of language and multi-perspective thinking.

With the exception of a Christmas during the COVID 19 pandemic, there has never been a season that I did not get to be nearly squeezed to death by my mother's "crushing hugs", as my nieces and nephews affectionately call their mormor's enthusiastic embraces. I have celebrated first Christmases of babies and newlyweds, including my mother and stepfather (who my mom might say is both...just kidding, Gramps!). I have stayed up late, making sure Santa made it down the chimney and the reindeer got their snacks, and have been happy to wake up to excited children and coffee and the smell of cardamom on three hours of sleep. I have hugged my baby sister and now her husband, getting yet another chance to tell them both I love them for yet another year. This year he was cleared of his cancer in time for Thanksgiving, which is a gift enough for all of us.

Instead of this collection of small moments of fleeting happiness, I could choose to keep close all the reasons why I should not only despise this season, but also stop trusting people, and push away the ideas of togetherness and warmth. I could keep those memories of deep suffering fresh and crisp and clear and use them as my validation to opt out of connection or opt into judging people for believing in anything hopeful and good, or - heaven forbid - romantic. I could push away people who try to get close to me and might hurt me again or hold grudges against the ones who have. It would be SO very much easier, but then I wouldn't be me.

I choose to believe that people inherently want to, even deeply yearn to, feel connected and close, regardless of the season, and that the absence of that connectedness is where we have erred as a species. I believe that, even in the hardest of hearts, there is still a small child who wishes for their own version of twinkling lights or sleighbells. Maybe that looks like a new bike or a baby doll, or maybe it looks like a warm pair of shoes and a roof in a war-torn country. Maybe their most secret, deepest inner-child wish is for their family to stop fighting for a day, or to have enough food for their family to share a meal, or for the supposed grownups of their country to stop declaring wars. Maybe it is all of those things, but as the elves in "The Santa Clause" say, "the magic has just grown out of them," and they have forgotten how to hope. That doesn't mean that child isn't still in there, hoping upon hope that someone will heed their whispering pleas for healing and kindess.

I believe that "magic" is not some mystical, ethereal force beyond our grasp, but something we create, sometimes with a great deal of effort, in our environments, in our relationships with one another, and in our own hearts. I believe that sharing cookies, hand-painted by and with the people I love, with warm mulled wine, faces lit by a bonfire, and Jim Henson's legendary Emmet Otter on the backyard screen might be the closest thing to heaven I have ever seen.

I believe in love.

I believe in gratitude.

I believe in generosity.

I believe in joy.

There is not a thing in this universe, human or otherwise, that will ever take those things from me. I choose them, with great deliberation and conscious intent. Over and over again, day after day, I have found the strength and the effort it takes to purposely choose them, even when it has seemed impossible, and I will continue to do so until my last breath has left my chest and my last memory has been made.

If I could have one wish this holiday season, it would be for anyone who has been hurt, is grieving, feels lost, or is alone and in need of warmth and connection to find that same strength within themselves. Our brief human lives come and go before we are ever wise enough to see how quickly they are passing, and every one of us deserves to have at least one true moment of joy. Every one of us deserves a twinkling light in the darkness.