24 Days of Making, Doing, and Being: December 4
The old and unpolished.
Welcome to 24 Days of Making, Doing, and Being, a digital Advent calendar for slowing down and making space for presence, creativity, and gratitude. This is a seasonal offering for paid subscribers of the Creative Fuel newsletter. Thank you for being here. If you missed a day you can catch up here.
Every year around this time, a package arrives from a good friend in Sweden. It contains three Christmas teas (flavors: glögg, pepparkaka, and saffron) and a magazine. Every year, the teas are always exactly the same flavor, and the magazine is the holiday edition of a specific title.
Drinking this tea is a sensory cue for how December feels to me, and sitting down with the magazine is bit of a kickoff to the season. The ritual is both in the name of inspiration—maybe there will be a fun recipe to try—but also in the name of eye-rolling, as my friend and I have a tradition of lamenting to each other via text how absurd some of the photos are.
You know the kind: woman dressed in incredibly glamorous outfit to perform holiday tasks like baking cookies and decorating the house. She is READY for the festivities! Not pictured: laundry piles, mess of said baking project, work deadlines.