A Christmas Summer
a love letter to december ☼ the philosophy of the holidays ☼ housekeeping for the newsletter ☼ CTAs + a journal from may '24
"Alexa, play Christmas jazz!"
I have been listening to Christmas music on and off this month, which is not an anomaly for me: typically, I start playing festive music in July, since it is officially the second half of the year and that makes me a reasonable lover of everything red, gold and dusted with sugar, as opposed to a maniac who plays This Christmas! in March (although, I suppose March is closer to the previous Christmas than July is to the next Christmas, which I will consider if and when I choose to play Christmas songs any earlier than July).
Because I know little to nothing about music—aside from the music theory class I took in high school and nearly failed, because all I wanted to do in that class was create music, as opposed to learn about the scales needed to create music—all I know is that Christmas music uses the good chords, the bright notes and nothing else. It is a bit concerning how fast the music remedies my heart from dreary to blissful. Long days of work, heavy conversations and waves of anxiety wobble at the knees when the major key rings and the voice of Ella Fitzgerald appears like a diamond in the snow.
I do not believe in Jesus or God, unless Jesus is a man selling tortas on the street and God is a DJ playing Kim Petras and Earth, Wind & Fire. However, Christmas has always meant everything to me. Perhaps it is because I am addicted to sweets, love giving gifts or grew up with an affinity for magical, made-up stories. Perhaps it is the way my mom decorates the house with an army of snowmen, reindeer and LED snowflakes or the smell of pine and sweet liquids bubbling atop a stove.
Of course, there is an obvious reason why people love Christmas, aside from the fact that it is the only day in which binge eating is universally accepted: it brings friends and families together. It is the season of giving. While there are many arguments to be made about how Christmas is a commercialized tradition sustained by corporate greed, or how there being a season for giving is somewhat dim to begin with, considering every season should be a season for giving, and every season should be a season where we gather, spend time with the people we love and take a break from the typical human agenda of doing, the reality of life is just that: the world tends to weather our awareness of how to live well, no matter how many times we sit down to meditate or read or come to the realization that we have been moving too fast or thinking too much, and so: we need reminders. We need holidays to pop out of the calendar like characters who tell us that this is the day, this is the season and this is the time to take time for ourselves and the people around us.
At the end of every year, around Christmas and New Year’s, millions of people commit to being better. Millions of people wish and kiss and make silly resolutions they may never fulfill. I do not think the power of a resolution is exclusive to its completion, though. I think the power rests primarily in the hope, in the belief that there is more for us: to become, to reach, to dig the teeth of our lives into. In the hours between celebrations where we sit inside and watch the ivory sun caress the earth, crunched leaves and long nights signaling another orbit of the planet, we believe in transformation. Although I tend to abstain from making resolutions myself, I am fond of thinking about the years as if they are pages of a book: What do I want to write on this page? What did I write on that page? When I put all of these pages together, what story does it tell?
The holiday bonus pack of Christmas and New Years pairs two things that I think are essential to a life well lived: the acceptance of the present (putting down unfinished work to spend time with the people we love; celebrating the past year’s goals and making amends with the ones we never reached; allowing ourselves to eat and drink and be merry, as opposed to self-effacing) and the hope for the future (believing that we can do everything in one year; building up excitement for this and that; viewing January 1st as a clean slate and a new beginning). Winter is a time for looking back, and then ahead. At the end of the year, it does not matter if we grew our first tomato or got a new job, watched eight hundred hours of Netflix or made five million dollars. We are all living, doing something, achieving at certain things and trying at others. It is a difficult thing to do, and we should be proud of ourselves.
When I take the time to examine my story and draft what I want to write on the next few pages, I am fascinated at the content and the fact that I am able to write that content (live a life) in the first place. It is fascinating to be alive, to be here and to navigate the world in this year on this day in this hour. I realize that I talk about presence a lot, but I think it is the single most important power that we have. It is the driving force behind a child’s joy on Christmas Eve, a friend’s laugh over dinner and a wasted white girl’s gregarious pitch when she yells I’m LIVINGGGG!
As I visualize the details I associate with Christmas, a scary thought pops into my mind: at some point, Christmas will look very different. At some point, there will be a Christmas where my parents are no longer with us. Eventually the kitchen we’ve hosted my aunts, uncles and cousins in will be replaced by another across the state (or country or globe). There will be a Christmas where I am farther away from the beginning of my life than the end of it.
What will happen then: Will Christmas become a day of mourning, an attempt at recreating, as opposed to a cornerstone of all the things I love?
At first sight, the fear that the holiday will eventually lose its candor, too abstracted from its original form to inspire its signature joy, makes me want to crawl beneath a tree and hide there forever. However, when I examine it further and consider what Christmas means to me beyond the sensory details, Christmas takes the shape of a choice, as opposed to a date on a calendar. The holiday is less of an event that happens to us than it is a decision we make, every single year, to show up for the people in our lives and celebrate them, as well as ourselves. This is something that I can believe in for the rest of my life, no matter what December 25th looks like. And as I grow older, it becomes clearer to me that we can make these decisions every day, so long as we are aware that the choice is ours to make (to show up for our lives, ourselves and the people around us).
Lately, I have been choosing to apply the magic of Christmas in my everyday life. Not just through music, but in a general approach to living that values the art of noticing as much as the art of doing. All of this may sound extremely generic and sentimental, but it is an ongoing process for me: learning how to live with more intimacy and less speed, cherishing and protecting my time, being intentional about how I navigate the world by tending to the needs of myself and the people around me, as opposed to, say, overbooking my calendar, overwhelming myself with ambition and assigning arbitrary deadlines to my life as if it is a product that requires a manager.
Yesterday I talked to a friend on the phone and we asked each other for our “life updates.” We both laughed after relaying those updates, realizing that we said so much and yet so little. The conversation made me think that life is a lot of the same: we work, we travel, we love, we laugh, we cry, we learn and we wonder what any of it means. When I was younger, I used to think that we lived in order to get somewhere, as if living itself was a linear act that was meant to be played out until we reached a certain climax. I used to think that “life updates” were an important thing to have (a new partner, a new job, a new city, a new life-changing event). Now life seems more like a range of ongoing curves and colors that peak and dip at certain points, no one more beautiful than the rest, for the characteristics of each depend on the others (how high, low, bright or dark). In other words, I do not think that we are meant to approach living as if we will eventually arrive into something else–as we are living, we are arriving.
To be honest, I don’t know if anything I am writing makes sense. Sometimes I think that writing itself is just therapy in disguise, whereby writers trick readers into acting as their makeshift therapists, considering much of what we write is nonsense and yet here you are, reading it. But I think it is supposed to be like that: the nature of life is messy. It lacks structure. It is not meant to be parceled up into pretty words that read like a technical document. So instead we spill out scars, gems and twigs onto the page until it looks like art.
All I am trying to say is this: When I was younger, I used to wish that Christmas was every day. Now I feel that it is. By meeting up with friends, making space for community (small and large), and cherishing the time in front of us, we can celebrate ourselves and the people that we love regardless of the season. We can gather with our friends, pass time and listen to ourselves talk about nothing and everything all at once. When that Charlie Brown song with the piano skips around my ears, I am with the two of my grandmothers, my cousins, my parents, my brother and my friends, seated around a galactic tree ablaze with primary colors. I am waking up in the morning and running down the stairs. I am drunk and full, nine and nineteen and twenty nine, harboring the hopes, dreams and dysmorphia of the season, living as a person on this planet and finding gratitude for every aspect of what being that person means.
housekeeping: new sleepovers every other thursday!
Hello, everyone! This is me committing to publishing a new newsletter every other week, making this a biweekly publication (as opposed to a sometimes weekly, sometimes bi-weekly, sometimes monthly publication).
The day I am choosing to send out new editions is Thursday, because Thursday signals the start of the weekend. Nothing bad ever happened on a Thursday. I mean, don’t quote me on that, but it seems like a good day.
Of course, I might stray from this schedule, because that is the nature of creating. However, this is my intention: To deliver a new newsletter to your inbox every other Thursday. Woohoo!
call to actions + a bonus journal from may ‘24
I want to take a moment here to encourage everyone to vote for the Democratic Party. Kamala Harris is not a perfect candidate, but she (and Tim Walz) are light years ahead of the Trump campaign, in terms of representing policies that will benefit the BIPOC+, queer and immigrant communities (and the United States economy at large, in my opinion). As a little bonus, I am adding one of the journals I wrote back in May 2024 that inspired a previous letter I sent on the genocide in Gaza. Although these questions still ring true, I am, at least, happy that Biden stepped down. While “hope” is a strong word to represent my feelings for the United States, there is something akin to it—at least more than there used to be.
I also want to take a moment to encourage people to continue fighting for the people in Palestine and voicing their support of the Palestinian people. Nothing has stopped. Nothing has changed. Here is a basic resource for staying up to date on movement and getting involved in the various (US-based) campaigns.
May 1, 2024
I am overwhelmed and sad and confused and generally a bit defeated? That the United States government is again funding war and removing students from campuses and putting people in jail who just want other people in the world to be safe. It’s like: where the fuck did we go wrong? How do we stand up against this system? This design? The entire thing is all fucked up. The entire government…How is it that we are choosing between two war criminals? Biden and Trump? Seriously? How is it that the cops are removing people for protesting against the institutions that have funded the annihilation of peoples and cultures for decades? How are we here? What do we do? What does it mean to enjoy a day in a life when other people cannot? We are safe and mankind goes on and every generation had a war but also we are not safe, we are only safe until we are not. How many innocent people have to keep dying? What the actual fuck? WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK? I am so fucking angry and upset and fucking over all of this goddamn bullshit. HOW IS IT THAT WE ARE JUST WATCHING A GENOCIDE HAPPEN HOW IS IT THAT WE ARE ASKING FOR IT TO STOP HOW IS IT THAT OUR SO CALLED DEMOCRACY IS ONLY ABLE TO EXIST BY DECIMATING OTHER POPULATIONS BY LYING BY KILLING BY SILENCING BY FAKING EVERY GODDAMN OUNCE OF “FREEDOM” AND “JUSTICE” THAT SUPPOSEDLY DEFINES AMERICA. FUCK. AMERICA. FUCK AMERICA. FUCK AMERICA. FUCK AMERICA. FUCK ISRAEL. FUCK EUROPE. FUCK EVERY GODDAMN WESTERN COUNTRY THAT HAS TREATED MILLIONS OF PEOPLE AS IF THEY WERE ANTS. FUCK.
I told Mijael that I was overwhelmed and we talked, we talked and talked and talked about how fucked up the world is and he told me yes that is how the world is and we will get through it but also what if we don’t? What happens next? America is over. Like, seriously, the empire is done. They have stolen from people in every invisible way they could, so what’s next? And Mijael talked about how one day humans won’t be here, one day we’ll all be gone because the weather won’t allow it, we’ve accelerated the warming so much simply to make more money and build more things and for what, he is happy that humans will be wiped out, that the world will be left alone, and I think that I am too. I mean, there is so much beauty in humanity, yet, there is so much ugly. It reminded me of the book Pure Colour, all the things Mijael said. And I laughed because he’s right but also what? What? A lot of people are not okay right now, and I can’t just sit here and do nothing. But I also can’t let it consume me… Like, I want to enjoy the day, this life, and I will. But I also want to fight.
And what happens if we overthrow the government? What happens if we wipe out the system? Would it just be recreated? Are we really like this? I don’t know.
I wanted to add to this journal that I love Mijael. That in the days before, the first few days I was back, we had so much fun, and we are still having so much fun. I want to enjoy every day as it is, as it is around me: the peace, the beauty, while I am still here. I don’t know. I am excited for humanity to end, for us to leave the world alone, but while I am here I want to see all the beauty it can offer. Because there is good. But maybe it’s not enough, maybe we deserve to be wiped out. I think that is true.
Falling in love is a quiet experience. It is loud in its own ways but quiet in strength, the way that you get to see someone become a child again. Like the morning that Mijael drank coffee and was even more chatty than he usually is, he kept chatting and chatting and when I went to the bathroom he stood outside the door and kept chatting to me, wanted me to look at a picture of him as a baby that his mom sent him because his dad was wearing a sweater that he has now. And that made me smile, how he just wanted to be by me, like a kid. I love him so much.
I love this world so much. I love my family so much. Well, maybe not the world. But some parts of it. ☷
With love,
Your favorite capybara ~ AKA Travis Zane
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