On one thing I learned a year ago, which will radically increase your JOY in the next six weeks
A year ago this week, I learned something about living in America that's altered my whole attitude to the festive period; read this to find out my shortcut to joy
I want to share with you something I learned a year ago which has changed the way I experience the next couple of months of winter. It was a realisation I came to after we’d experienced our first Thanksgiving here in America; I was reminded of it when I read something Nick Cave said recently, which was “We’ve all had too much sorrow, now is the time for joy.”
Big parts of life feel weird and scary at the moment, for all of us. And there is so much we cannot control. Existential panic has become the background hum of everyday, even when the immediate circumstances of life are good. And then there is Christmas on the horizon. That should be fun, right? Well, not always. My sister Nell hated Christmas: the expectation of joy which never delivers, the family rows, the endless fucking shopping, and the non-stop, relentless, un-ending cooking and clearing up. That unique, agonising festive melancholy.
But this year I am determined not to feel those things, and I don’t want you to, either. Sadly, we cannot all gather together for a massive festive pot luck, each bringing a simple dish we could share as a huge feast and the only gift expectation that everyone would have to bring a really good, sidesplitting joke to share with the group (wouldn’t that be fun!!). In place of this, instead I am going to share with you something I learnt last Thanksgiving, that moment in the American year which marks the start of “the holidays”. That thing I learnt has completely changed my attitude to the next six weeks or so, and which means I’m facing it, not with a sense of existential dread, but lightness, excitement and yes, joy. Also, I have a joke about the Christmas period I want to share with you which ALWAYS makes me laugh. But more of that below.