It’s here: the anxiety apex ahead of the holidays. Who decided to make yesterday the shortest day of the year, when our lists are still so long? Who bobbled their departmental duties, back when the Gregorian calendar was drawn up, and gave us a full week of school this year before the winter break started? And what dark forces drive the sadists who looked at said full week, and whispered: “And unto each of them, a dress-up theme. On Wednesday, you must dress ‘like your tree.’”
Full disclosure: For every yuletide pressure the world imposes, I put two on myself. Over here, I have 200 handmade gingerbread men and zero pairs of clean underwear. I am in a haze of missed sleep and missed shipping deadlines, flopping over the finish line of work, panicking over whether I’ve been present and whether I wrapped all the presents. My mouth is saying sure to running the craft station at the preschool party and picking up candy canes for the second grade’s hot cocoa bar, but my eyes are saying help me, can I have a piece of lettuce? I haven’t seen lettuce in weeks. I have only eaten cookies—the burnt ones, because those are the only ones I deserve—and when I eat one my pajamas get tight and I lie awake all night thinking of death.
But my time is coming. Long after the final (way off) notes of the final school concert have faded; after every grandmother’s appetite for photos has been sated; when everything has been eaten and opened; I will do My One Thing for Me. And it’s not too late for you to adopt this tradition, too. It is last-minute friendly, cheap, and packable. Here goes: On Christmas night, I sit on the couch by the tree, with a snack and a cocktail, and read an entire novel. This is my selfish Christmas tradition, and I highly recommend it.
The tradition was born during COVID. While almost nothing was easier then, Christmas was. I would never return to the era of relatives mingling in the yard or communing on Zoom (“What?” “No, you go”), but facts are facts: In 2020, we had run through everything “Christmas” we could do by about 1 p.m. We had no one to see and nowhere to be, so I made a bourbon amaretto and poured some Half-Baked Harvest Mom’s Secret Christmas Eve Chex mix into a teacup, picked up Susie Yang’s White Ivy, and didn’t move for seven hours, except to get refills. I put my phone away, and when my children invariably stopped by, asking if I wanted to see how two pieces of plastic snapped together, I smiled and said maybe later. I didn’t leave the world of the book, or the glow of the lights, til the story was finished.
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