Image Credit: Geneva O’Hara, a photo from a festive visit to the Rockefeller Centre in 2023

It was a cold November evening, late in the month, when I first considered that the heralded ‘Christmastime’ had finally arrived. In my university town of York, the beginning of Christmas is punctuated by the arrival of the famous – or infamous – Christmas Market. The day I noticed the stalls set up in one of the city’s main squares, I heaved an automatic sigh of dismay. Goodbye, evenings free of foot traffic; goodbye, peaceful Sunday mornings. There was, however, an unexpected part of me that prodded me from beneath the needless complaints: Is it really Christmas again? And I felt happy.

It’s a common lament among adolescents and wandering 20-somethings like myself that it just doesn’t feel like Christmas anymore. How could it? When you’re 21 and living away from home, you don’t anticipate running downstairs at six in the morning to presents underneath the tree, or Mom making breakfast while Dad pops on ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’. Not everyone experienced the same kind of childhood Christmas, but there seems to be an anti-climactic tone to the holiday shared amongst many as we’ve grown up. Maybe it’s a lack of childlike wonder, or maybe it’s the way December sneaks up on you before you’re done reminiscing about July; but for a lot of people, including myself, Christmas hasn’t become bad, per se, but it’s certainly changed.

Admittedly, when beginning to reflect on the holiday season, I realised I hadn’t given too much thought to it since I visited the Christmas Market in the early days of its announcement. To get into the spirit, I did what anybody would do: listen to the most sombre Christmas ballads I could find, and hope I would start to feel anything about the upcoming holiday – even if the easiest thing to feel was melancholy. After LCD Soundsystem’s ‘Christmas Will Break Your Heart’ concluded with the optimistic “Still, I’m coming home to you” after a brigade of lonely seasonal laments, I found that I couldn’t even make it through ‘If We Make It Through December,” one of Phoebe Bridgers’ many Christmas covers. Was I softening up? As tears welled in my eyes during a dreary walk around campus intent on pondering the festivities, I became enthralled with the old heartbreaking hit – and, as I made my way into a campus bar to bid a few holiday farewells, I completely forgot about Christmas at all. I did, though, remember to be festive. Sitting with my friends and telling now-humorous stories about wounds that time did indeed heal, I felt ‘merry.’

That evening, I had my first gift exchange of the year: my best friend and I happened to both think of each other in the bookstore, her having wrapped me an annotated copy of poems from her favourite poet Mary Oliver, and I a book about colours in nature for artists and scientists (she’s both). I confessed that I had hoped she wouldn’t think a book was a ‘lame’ gift – it had just made me think of her – and how relieved I was that she’d gotten me the same. Perhaps reciprocation is not only a comfort, but a reminder of being seen: the mirror that you pass by and catch the eyes of a friend, rather than yourself.

This would be the second Christmas I’d spend abroad. I’m from New England rather than old, and I enjoy spending it with my fiancé while he stays for work instead of leaving for the States. Fortunately, my dad had decided to visit this year – an unexpected present to brighten our Christmas cheer. When I asked him for gift ideas, he gave me the parent classic: “Seeing you is the gift”. Of course, this is truly the best answer one can receive, however I was still searching for something small he could unwrap on Christmas Day. He responded again later, making an addendum to his original response. He asked only for a photo to take home, framed with my fiancé and I. 

Sometimes, in the midst of three years away from friends and family, all you have are photographs. Sometimes, I pretend I can live in them: the photo of my best friend from home, which she framed for me (looking up from my desk, I can see it now); the 4×6 prints my mother tucks into each card she sends; the polaroids in my wallet of my fiancé from various ages, where I can peer into the million lives he’d lived before he even knew about me; and even the illustrations on my beautiful engagement cards from friends, displayed across our flat. Though I didn’t frequently feel bombarded with homesickness, I often looked forward to a simpler time when everyone I loved might be just around the corner again. This Christmas, however, I pondered another thought: so many people I loved – new friends and old – were right here in my little university town. It was hard to think of a time when I’d never be wishing I was somewhere else, now that I’d made so many connections overseas. More than anything, I was grateful to have so many loved ones, they couldn’t all fit in one place.

Last Christmas, I was still living on campus – and it felt like a ghost town. At first it was like our own private village, but by the time I finally visited home in January, it had begun to feel abandoned. Nothing going on, and nobody to see. I cut my bangs and dyed my hair, and when there weren’t any more ways to regrettably change my appearance, I would walk an empty campus feeling moody and underwhelmed. Winters in Connecticut weren’t so grey as in England, and it was my first holiday season without friends and family (or snow). As I walked, complete with depressing indie Christmas classics, I let the holiday season blend together with each month that preceded it. The 25 of December passed me by with not so much as a wave. Though I didn’t wave either. Instead, I looked forward to the new year with blind faith, and a tiny bit of optimism – and, in retrospect of the year that followed, I was right to.

It’s impossible to assign any sort of feeling to Christmas, because it seems to wax and wane each year like an indecisive moon who forgot it’s on a schedule. Christmas has no set path, nor, as I’ve experienced, no set destination. Winding around mountain roads and just nearly avoiding the edge, the holiday season feels like it should reach some sort of summit. Sometimes, the summit is just a reminder of what you already have: good food and good people. Many families repeat Christmas traditions every year, like lighting fireworks outside. I didn’t grow up with anything like that to carry on as I’ve moved forward; I can, however, keep alive the most important tradition of all: telling as many people as possible that you love them, and that you hope they have a day so joyous you can call it ‘merry.’ Near or far, and however the circumstance, Christmas at its finest is a day not for something extraordinary, but hopefully for something quite everyday: to spread love and joy, however you can. Maybe it sounds cheesy, or cliché, but perhaps only because it’s true. My unofficial toast: may Christmas be unsurprising, ordinary, and a blanket to warm the heart.