24 Days of Making, Doing, and Being: December 6
24 Days of Making, Doing, and Being: December 6
Darker traditions, Christmas witches, and the exhaustion of a culture obsessed with more.
24 Days of Making, Doing, and Being, is a digital Advent calendar for slowing down and making space for presence, creativity, and gratitude, a seasonal offering for paid subscribers.
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Around this time of the month the exhaustion sets in.
Early December doesn’t have the buffer of festive mode quite yet, and time off is still weeks away. The flurry of end-of-year deadlines has already started, the external pressure for all the things one could and should be doing is at an all-time high, and even though you’re desperately craving some hibernation mode, you know you must get through a few more weeks of business-as-usual. Not to mention the cumulative impact of day after day watching the world with a heavy heart.
While messaging back and forth with a friend on Instagram the other day about a potential workshop we were going to host, I wrote, “I’m so tired and it’s only early December.” To which I promptly received an automated pop-up message: “Did this conversation support your business goals?” There were buttons for me to choose “yes” or “no.” I avoided pushing any buttons, but I took it as a clear sign that I should let go of said workshop. Business goal success!
This end-of-year tiredness is what can make overdone and over-the-top monthlong holiday endeavors feel a bit too much, as this rant about elf on the shelf by
manages to capture. As she writes, “I want to tell mothers everywhere that you DO NOT have to spend Christmas Eve dipping Cheerios into chocolate and sprinkles and pretending they’re tiny donuts for elves. Drink a glass of wine and howl at the moon.”I don’t have children, but I particularly loved that line and promptly sent it to my sister-in-law who said she was in charge of baking 100 gingerbread cookies for a Christmas event at her son’s school.
This demand for more becomes exhausting. I saw two magazine covers at the library recently, both with some version of the word “more” in big bold letters. MORE JOY NOW and MORE IS MORE! There was so much silver and tinsel involved. It felt like an assault on the senses, a call-to-action that, in fact, was not called for.
Why do we want more?
To mask over the sorrows, tragedies, and sufferings that humankind is continually perpetuating? To keep us so busy that we miss the reflective call of stillness? To be able to show that we did something with our time?