On finding meaning amongst the special melancholy and abundance of Christmas
Grief feels more pervasive at Christmas - the poignancy of absence more acute than it might be at other moments in the year
It’s Christmas Eve and I really, really hope you are in a place, literally and psychologically, where you can enjoy some of the twinkling anticipation which this night can bring with it. I want to say Happy Christmas my friends, and thank you so much for being part of my small world here. I LOVE writing for you and expressing the things that matter to me, and I love the way we can chat about these things in the comments. This year I’m hoping we can have more virtual get-togethers on here, and later, when I move back to England, maybe we can make those happen in real life too. I’m also looking forward to running creativity and writing workshops on here next year.
And I know, very well, that Christmas can be a deeply poignant time, so if you’re feeling that special seasonal melancholy at the moment, I wrote this for you.
On Sunday morning I cried in a taxi taking me to my flight back to America, after spending 3 days in London with my dad. The pale winter light was brightened by the thin white sunshine which seeped between buildings as the city slid behind me. It wasn’t that I was sad to be returning to America. I wanted to squeeze the children and bury my face in the back of their little necks to inhale that biscuity smell that Lester and Dash at least still carry on them, but I felt a tug of real melancholy at leaving my dad, who I’d spent the previous three days alone with.
You will be reading this (I hope) on Christmas Eve, but I’m writing it in a tiny plastic seat on my flight back to Washington. I know that as I drive back from the airport, Washington will glitter in its wrapping of Christmas lights. Since late November there have been light up candy canes and life-size coloured sleighs pulled by nodding reindeer in the front yards of houses all through our neighbourhood. It’s cheerful. It’s an All-American Christmas and that’s a beautiful thing to be witnessing. I feel privileged to be living inside. But grief. And sadness. Despite the glitter - and sometimes because of it - Christmas can bring with it a special kind of melancholy. It’s there, isn’t it?
I sense it, amongst the rustle of wrapping paper or in the tangy scent of the fresh skin of tangerine. I hold it, in the palm of my hand, as I unwrap gold chocolate coins feeling that familiar, stiff metallic shape, which this year will take the form of a dime, not a two pence piece. Grief feels especially vivid at this moment in the year. Learning how to feel this abundance alongside loss, and allow it to be there, while I’m simultaneously stuffing small presents into a stocking or pulling a spitting turkey from the oven, so that joy and sorrow can exist in the same moment, is a practice I’m getting better at.
Because when you’re missing someone, grief feels more pervasive at Christmas, the poignancy of absence more acute than it might be at other moments in the year - although the strange thing about grief is that it rears up and stings you, like a rattlesnake, at any moment. Still, Christmas grief is especially brightly textured.