How to Holiday

living with self-kindness over the next several weeks

Happy November… my favorite month of the year!

a walk in the neighborhood

 The heat has relented. 

The trees begin the month in glorious splendor, then fade into muted earth tones as they shed their color, bare branches scraping the sky. 

As the days grow shorter, the sunlight gets all beautifully smudgy and scarce. 

November also features my favorite holiday, Thanksgiving. And as someone who loves the anticipation of something almost as much as the thing itself, November is the inhale before the clamor of December, a month which seems to go by in about 17 minutes. 

Ms. Christmas is getting ready… if you know you know.

A few weeks ago I realized I still had a week of combined vacation and study leave to use in 2023. So I decided to take off this past week. I scheduled it right under the wire—as a pastor, with Advent and Christmas breathing down our necks, this is about as late as you can be gone without committing minor ecclesiastical malpractice.

Ah, it was glorious! Three days in a teeny cabin in Shenandoah National Park…

…followed by a few days of at home–tea, books, and puttering:

my first set of blackout poems for supporting subscribers

I’ll be honest–even with the perspective of some time off, I’m still alarmed that Thanksgiving is less than two weeks away. But the very things that made this week so restorative are approaches I plan to take into the next 53 days. (My birthday—January 2—is the official end of the holidays. This is the way.) 

I offer these suggestions here in the hopes that they help you weather the holiday tumult. For those of you screaming “too soon!” I hear you. Hey, as a pastor and a parent of three, thinking ahead helps reduce my stress, and increases the likelihood that I’ll get to the end of a busy season of our family’s life feeling satisfied rather than disappointed at how fast and thoughtlessly it all went. But if you’re wired differently, no worries. Maybe consider these as approaches to life in general.

Set intentions.

Y’all know by now that I like intentions much better than goals. Intentions are stout enough to hold up to the complexities of life, but flexible enough to absorb the unexpected. Good intentions are broad, inviting, and catchy enough to stay top of mind (keep it simple). For Shenandoah, my intentions were to read, write, and hike. I did other stuff too, but those big three helped give focus and shape to my time.

What are my intentions for the coming holiday season? I’ll be spending some time pondering that over the next few days. I’d love to hear some of your ideas.

Reduce decision fatigue.

I stayed at Skyland Lodge, which is a lovely space; the downside is that there’s only one place to eat—the Skyland dining room—unless you want to drive all the way out of Shenandoah and into a neighboring town. But the dining room suited me just fine. Having fewer options meant less time spent weighing choices and more time embracing the joys of the week.

How can you reduce your own decision fatigue in this busy season? When our kids were young, we would give them category gifts: each child received an article of clothing, a book, and a “heart’s desire,” for example. Limiting ourselves to these categories paradoxically made gift-giving a lot easier because it narrowed our decision-making.

What traditions are life-giving and non-negotiable? Which rituals drain your energy and that of your loved ones? The wonderful thing about traditions is they don’t require a lot of thought. We have the same coffee cake every Christmas Eve, and there’s something easeful and comforting about that familiarity.  (The lack of thought is also what makes traditions perilous. Traditions can become traditionalism when we do things because we feel we have to, or when we divorce the “what” from the “why.” Proceed thoughtfully.) 

Pare down to the essentials.

When I fly somewhere, I’m a ninja packer who takes great pride in bringing as small a suitcase as possible. When I’m driving, though, I feel much freer to bring all the creature comforts I can think of. This time I challenged myself to bring only what I could carry in a single trip to and from the car. That still provided plenty of room for things that made me happy—an apple-scented candle, a single knitting project, a few books, a soft blanket—and instead of being bogged down with a bunch of extraneous stuff, I was able to practice contentment. 

Those of us who struggle with FOMO (fear of missing out) can find this time of year challenging. I personally know of four different winter market events just in the Reston/Herndon area alone, and each one is great, I’m sure. But we don’t need to attend them all! I love the reframe from FOMO to JOMO (joy of missing out)—the goal isn’t to do all of the things, but to be present to the various things you do decide to do. There’s a way of teaching sacred stories to children in which the question is asked, “Is there anything you could take out of this story and still have the story?” What could you take out of your November and December and have it still be beautiful?

Build in some margin.

As a younger adult, I used to maximize my vacation time, cramming in as much travel and activity as possible. If I had five days off, I’d make the most of those five days, leaving town on the first day of vacation and coming home the night before I returned to work. Now I value (ok, require) recovery time. I had this whole week off, but only spent half of it in Shenandoah. Yeah, I was wistful as I drove home on Wednesday, and certainly would have liked to stay longer. But reentry is a process, and I’m not sure my enjoyment at additional days away would have offset the discombobulation of jumping abruptly back into a routine. 

For those of us shepherding children through this “magical” time of year, this suggestion is easier said than done. The expectations are thick. Here’s a secret I’ve learned now that my kids are older: they remember that special thing you did with them, but they don’t remember whether you did it every single year. So skip the fancy gingerbread house this time around if you want. There’s always next year. Tend to your transitions. Give yourself some buffer. You’ll be glad you did. 

Check in with yourself regularly. 

I started each morning in Shenandoah with a short bit of journaling, just to get myself oriented to the day. This doesn’t have to be elaborate—a page or two of random brain-dumping was all I required. And then I’d check in every so often throughout the day. How is my energy right now? What would feel good to body, mind and spirit? I bagged a hike one morning because I just didn’t feel up to it. 

I recently read about a nightly review called the 3/3/3: three things that went well, three things that could have gone better, and three things you’re grateful for. What would it be like to 3/3/3 your way through the holidays? Write them down if you want, or just mull them as you prepare for sleep. 

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A word of caution/reality about these suggestions. You can do everything “right,” with the utmost intention and care, and still struggle, lose the thread, have the wheels fall off the wagon. Life happens, often chaotically, and no amount of planning can keep that from happening. The throughline of all of these suggestions is self-compassion. 

Steady on.

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What I’m Up To

• Thank you to my friend Patrice Gopo for giving last week’s article about cognitive distortions a shout out in her newsletter! (I can’t wait to read her book of essays, Autumn Song: Essays on Absence.) 

• Here’s last week’s sermon, a personal reflection for All Saints Day about the death of my father twenty years ago. (The whole service was glorious.) 

• Coming up this Monday for supporting subscribers: neuroscience for beginners, or what I’ve learned after the past couple years of mental-health boot camp. 

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Link Love

I loved what Frances had to say about awe.