still, doing nothing
If you’ve stopped by looking for something to eat, I warmly recommend you consult the Meera Sodha pantheon of deliciousness for a suggestion, and if you just can’t pick I say start with this one.
If you’ve stopped by to hear one person who has clocked out of holiday commerce ramble at length about why, then sit right on down and fasten your seat belt.
Maybe you are not having a crisis of personal credo; maybe you’ve just left it too late to shop and now you are scrambling to make peace with further enriching Jeff Bezos lest the holidays be RUINED. In that case, stick around for the gift guide at the end! It will be right up your street.
Once upon a time, I did not have a very religious upbringing (among Jews), and neither did my husband (among the Christianity-adjacent). This Santa/no Jesus, Latkes/not much synagogue background set us up neatly, when our children were little, to keep a little misty magical veil of agnostic fairy tales swirled around them. The tooth fairy figured prominently but a role was played by any holiday connected to one or the other heritage that entailed some festive hoopla and an unseen entity which came bearing gifts. Easter, for example—we engaged in some grandparent-led fuss over that, of the chocolate variety (no church).
One day the oldest child came home from first grade with intel from a classmate: this was all a big fictional conspiracy. Claus, the “rabbit,” the cash for teeth program: all fronts.
At the time I hadn’t yet firmed up plans for the transition I was imagining from “misty & magical early childhood” to “you can rely on me for the truth thereafter.” It was gorgeously sketched out in a series of vignettes in my head but still lacked some crucial operational details. I was sure I had plenty of time to fill it all in.
When my little child of the lush and gorgeous imagination reported that little pigtailed so-and-so had used recess to present a TED talk entitled All of Life Is Very Possibly A Lie, the only semi-relevant thing I had in my toolbox was a technique that my sister had taught me. It’s one that works well for both parenting authentically and managing press conferences (a Venn diagram whose existence is surprising). In sum: FIRST FIND OUT WHAT THEY KNOW.
“What do you think?” I asked her.
She sighed. “Well,” she said. “I think the world is a WAY bigger miracle, and it’s true.”
I have been thinking about this statement pretty much on the daily for the almost 20 years since she uttered it. Among the facets of its value, she basically handed me the blueprints for the transition from the pretending we had been doing up to that point to the truthing (her word, at that time) which I had on my vision board. All of the smoke-and-mirrors pageantry was grounded in a wish that the three of them would come up believing in grace, in forces outside of ourselves that embrace and look out for us and which most reliably manifest in the acts of care and attention that human beings bestow upon each other.
In this scenario we weren’t { liars, found out } so much as we were { manifesters of love }. We could stop being anxious about keeping Oz behind the curtain and start being sloppy with the curtain on purpose, drawing older siblings into the magic made for younger ones until we were all in on the un-kept secret.
It sounds tidy but let’s be clear that it happened in a family. You know some shit went down. Ask any one of the three children (or for best results, the three of them together, after a late meal, all sitting around the table cracking themselves up while their father and I laugh and also look a little pale) and you will hear that we gave them plenty to work through. A big part of parenting, in case you are considering it as a life choice, is accepting your destiny to live in the gap between intention and impact. Blessings on the therapists of the world, to whom we offer job security.
ALSO, we still lived in a culture, and in a wider family of in-laws and out-laws. So we engaged in many years of lists and shopping and presents and wrapping and balancing of time among grandparents for their various hosted holidays, etc— all of it rooted in tradition and obligation, but not belief—right on up to very recently.
Though it felt like a train I could not turn, it grew less and less comfortable for me to operate that way. I focused a considerable amount of stressful wondering on the belief part. “Should we have tried harder to find a religion?” was the theme of many episodes of the long-running late night mental telethon known as IS THIS HOW YOU FAILED THE MOST?? Shockingly, not much came of this.
Last year around this time, we were all kind of tired from a particularly crappy series of blows to the family system. It came to everyone’s attention that none of the kids were little enough anymore to warrant making even the small hoopla we were trying to rally for. This insight illuminated a path to spend 12/25/19 the way so many Jews have always done it, an irony not lost on me even a little bit. We drove to NYC and went out for dim sum in Chinatown. We wrapped nothing, did not dress up, prepared no festive tableful of food, expected nothing, received nothing and gave each other nothing but time. Also, the food was really good, and I was able to congratulate myself that all three of our offspring can use chopsticks. That’s some top-drawer parenting right there! Two biscuits and a badge for me.
THIS IS IT, I said to myself. THIS IS THE WAY WE WILL DO IT HENCEFORTH.
I said it loud enough that 2020 could hear me, apparently.
I think you know that we will not be going out for dim sum this year.
This week, on a new podcast you might want to check out if you have ever given yourself a hard time about anything and are wondering if you will ever stop, I heard Bishop Michael Curry speak directly to me personally by saying two things in particular, and also surprise me in general by once again being someone in a God’s Guys suit speaking right into my agnostic soul. First, he discussed the Buddhist teaching that humans tend to focus more on the finger pointing at the moon than we do on the moon itself. Religion is the finger. The moon is the thing.
Then he said, obviously to me and me only, “I’m not blessed with stillness by nature. It takes a lot for me to learn to do the nothing that yields the stillness.” The stillness being, of course, where you find what’s holy.
AH, me. I’m still, doing nothing over here. And I have the gift guide to prove it.
From my vantage point, if have you left it too late to shop: Huzzah! The world’s ablaze. Here are some ways to throw some quenching water on the fires, ways which involve no shopping, no shipping, no wrapping and no warehouses. Just little acts of grace you can manifest in the lives of others while sitting safely on the sofa in your soft pants.
You know that holiday party you’re neither throwing nor catching? Take your hosting or host-gifting budget and send food to the doctors and nurses toiling thanklessly and dangerously at a hospital somewhere. If you feel tired just thinking about how to figure out who to call at what hospital to arrange that, these organizations can do the legwork for you:
Want to make direct human-to-human connections of the wish-list and care package variety? Each of these amazing people or organizations puts your help (cash or actual items) directly in the hands of someone in particular, giving them agency over their own needs and raising all boats by connecting humans to humans in collective support.
Seeding Sovereignty COVID-19 Mutual Aid
Grateful to have a therapist on your personal pit crew? You know I am! Every month when I pay said therapist, I also pass a little coin over to The Loveland Foundation , which supports mental health services for Black women and girls.
My dogs are some of the most overworked therapists in America. If a four-legged has kept the thin tether to your sanity reasonably taut, here are a few places you can share a little extra to keep pets at home with their people and out of crowded shelters:
Grateful to have food on your table? Slide some lettuce to the many community fridge programs that are another crucial, beautifully human-to-human form of mutual aid.
If you have read this far, first of all thank you. Second of all, drop a comment below and tell me something evergreen about your holiday experience. What’s a tradition or ritual that you love, either one you have inherited or one that you’re pioneering now?
For each comment, I’ll drop your name in the hat to win a little box of niceness I have been assembling here, with a collection of items from my own self (hello, golden milk mix!) and these lovely makers:
and
I’ll draw a name on January 6, so there’s no chance anyone receiving it could confuse it with a holiday gift. It will just be a sweet start to a mercifully new year. There’s a little photo of the goody box over at my instagram, where you can also follow and comment to enter.
Wishing you a peaceful and healthy holiday.