‘Tis the season
December 12: Today was the first snow of the holiday season! Yay!!!!! I love the holidays. I celebrate Christmas and next to Thanksgiving, it is my favorite holiday. I especially love the annual lighting of the Park avenue trees. Christmastime is one of the short-lived moments when I have fun hanging out with my family. That might be mean to say, but it’s true. Most of the time they are unbearable.
The first snow of the year always reminds me of when I was little and would walk up to the hill by the Met to go sledding with my brother. We would use paper bags we found in the cupboard as our makeshift sleds and happily collided with strangers on the way down the bumpy hill. Then we would hastily climb back up to repeat the same process of sledding and falling until our childish selves had fully inhaled the air of festivity.
I miss the days when I thought Santa was real. Christmas seemed like more of a glorious and sacred holiday when the idea of a present-bearing God stood at the center of it. I used to make presents for Santa and left them under my tree so we would exchange gifts. These gifts usually included a homemade hot chocolate kit or a Christmas sculpture I molded out of clay. I did this so the present transaction was not one-sided, and the peace of mind it offered me helped me sleep better at night.
I used to get those chocolate advent calendars but I don’t think there was ever a year I successfully finished eating one a day. There was always a period of three to five days when I would neglect eating the too-sweet chocolate whose only appeal was its Christmas-themed shape (present, stocking, cabin, or other similar iteration of holiday tchotchkes). I would then have to scavenge the rest of it, eat up those five missing days of chocolates in one sitting and it was never reminiscent of any Christmas spirit but more like a punishment for not following through with my pious devotion to Christmas.
December 24: This year I’m staying in the city for winter break/Christmas. I feel content that I have time off to relax and be solitary for a brief moment in my (preferred) crowded life.
“Where are you going for break?”
“I'm just staying here.”
Is that a bad thing? Of course not. So why does it feel so embarrassing to admit it? Maybe the pressure to travel stems from a fear of loneliness that remains when it feels like you’re the only one left at home.
That’s what it feels like for me when everyone else is gathered at the ends of the world: “The Only Girl Left in New York”(which is quite a dramatic conclusion, but I digress). It’s an eerie illusory quietness that surrounds me when I’m abandoned in a place that is typically overrun by every person I know. I guess it’s hard to stay in a place so riddled with people and memories after those things eventually leave because it’s all you can see in their absence. Being left in my particular case of daunting loneliness in the city has shown me just how inconsequential I am in the “grand scheme of things”. Nothing can be bothered by the tribulations of my life. And it’s funny because in a week everything will be back to normal, everyone will return, and the world will continue to spin as it has been spinning.
But for now, the race to get out continues. Some say that the impulse to travel is an impulse to escape yourself. To leave behind the parts of your identity you loathe the most in a place that knows you all too well. I think it’s an impulse to escape loneliness. I want to get out not because I don’t like it here but because I don’t want to be the last one left. I guess the foolish exclusion I unfortunately feel is a result of my juvenile disposition…
Is the solution to find comfort in loneliness? Maybe none of this is even a problem. Just a mini existential reflection on my fourteen days of quiet relaxation in the place that knows me all too well.
