Last weekend my family celebrated Christmas 2.0, thanks to happenstance.
No one in our house wanted to take the Christmas tree down, something that would usually have happened on the 6th of January. In times long past I would have taken it down sooner than that: the new year prompting a desire for a fresh clean start in a fresh clean house. The presence of a crispy malting Christmas tree makes that hard.
But as we continued to weather lockdown 3.0, which had started less than a week before Christmas day in the UK, our household found the warmth of the tree lights, the cheer of decorations, and the smell of pine spirit-lifting and life-enhancing: we didn’t want Christmas to end. So we kept it going.
On Sunday the 17th of January we ate a Christmas lunch of sorts: it transpires that you can’t buy a turkey in January, so a big chicken had to suffice, but we had all the trimmings and a cheeky bottle of Alsatian pinot gris. Following lunch we took down the tree and packed away the decorations.
A walk by the river completed proceedings.
The practice of Christmas 2.0 was the fruit of the past ten months.
Lockdown, or should I say 2020 in general, has taught me some valuable things, these among them. I have learned to care less about tidiness and more about valuing the people who make the mess in my house. (My family might say they haven’t noticed the change, but it’s real.) I have learned to embrace what is often a frustrating set of circumstances for the opportunities it affords me: opportunities for quality time; for family films; for LOTS of listening to music together; for good food and wine (at home); and for finding joy in the small things. You may have found the same: new joys in little luxuries, like enjoying a beautiful sky or a delicious cup of coffee.
And gratitude. It can sound like a cliché: count your blessings. But man, does it make a difference to life! I dearly hope this is a lesson I won’t unlearn when life is easier again (or at least more normal, whatever that will mean).
We’ve been forced to learn new habits through this, and some of them are worth hanging onto. New traditions are often born out of remarkable circumstances too; maybe Christmas 2.0 is a tradition that will stick.
Ask me next January.
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