A Different Kind of Christmas

I’ve long been a fan of “stripped down” music. Sub acoustic for electric, nix the background vocals, and give me the song in its raw, pure form. I’m going to date myself here, but the first CD (yes, that’s compact disc for all you youngsters out there) that came to mind as I typed this was a bonus disc included in a 2004 re-release of Gavin DeGraw’s Chariot album. This CD included studio recordings of all the tracks from the original, but in a much simpler format with less instrumentation and production value. It was called, well, Chariot (Stripped), and I’m certain I listened to it way more than its prototype.

Ironically enough, despite my taste in music, I don’t generally adhere to a “stripped down” philosophy in my everyday life. I own a book called, How to Celebrate Everything, and it knows more dog-ears than any other in my collection.

On the one hand, I blame my mother. She is one-hundred percent the most celebratory person I know, and I inherited her jubilant spirit the same way I inherited her nose and the shape of her feet.

On the other hand, there’s no blame needed—this is actually something about myself in which I take great pleasure. I may have, on more than one occasion, been known to stay up until 1:00am the night before a birthday party to perfect balloon garland or agonize over the color of cake icing and other seemingly inconsequential details. But the truth is, details are special, and special matters to me. So, pomp and circumstance it is. 

I say all of this as we prepare to head into the 2020 Christmas season, the anticipation of which has been heavy on my heart and in my mind. If this were any other year, by now we would have drawn names for two gift exchanges, chosen a spot for our standing holiday dinner date, and nailed down Christmas travel logistics that would take us North on I-71 to the Akron and Cleveland areas. Yet, here we are, in a year most certainly not like any other, staring down a December slated to have a lot less sparkle than the ones of yore.

This is hard for me. There is a lot of tradition woven into my celebrations, and while I’m not afraid to deviate, most of the time I don’t care to. This is why I watch It’s a Wonderful Life every Thanksgiving Eve as I prep pies and finish last-minute to-dos. It’s why I always choose a Paper Source birthday card for my husband and include a hand-written note with the same sentimental sign-off. It’s building new memories on top of old ones, preserving the things that have always meant the most and layering in additions as I see fit.

If you ask Google what is meant by “stripped down” music, she’ll tell you it means “reduced to its simplest form” or “reduced to the essentials.” As I ponder the portrait of the upcoming holiday season, this feels both accurate and appropriate. Haven’t we been reduced to the essentials all year? Essential workers, essential businesses… travel, shopping, etc. It shouldn’t surprise me to see the holidays follow suit.

Yet, as already mentioned, I don’t really do “simplest form” well. It is, by its very definition, a reduction, which is not how I approach any kind of celebration, least of all Christmas. I want the whole shebang: Mom’s breakfast pie and Dad’s fire, the matching pajamas and Alabama’s 1985 country Christmas album. I want to sit in that familiar circle at my in-laws and shuffle presents back and forth while sipping hot coffee and snacking on frozen cinnamon rolls. (I used to think this was blasphemy too, but don’t knock it until you try it.) 

It’s a hard truth for some of us to swallow, but for the vast majority of people, Christmas will look different this year. It isn’t going to be the same… but that’s okay. 

I’ll say it again for good measure, for me: this is okay. 

I can grieve all that this holiday won’t be while simultaneously looking forward with gratitude to everything it still can be. After all, for my family, this is our first December in our new home, and last year’s one-and-a-half-month old will be a bit more engaged in the festivities this time around, as will his now three-year-old brother.

Additionally, as a person of faith, I know there’s so much more to Christmas than jingle bells and twinkle lights. This holy holiday amounts to something greater than jolly gatherings, baking nights, and even those sacred-to-me traditions that I just don’t want to do without. Most of all, maybe this year, as the non-essentials are stripped away, I can arrive at Christmas morning having more fully prepared room in my heart for the King than ever before. Even without the trappings, we still have the tidings, and they’re still full of a wondrous joy for which our whole world yearns.

If 2020 has taught me anything, it’s that even a “world-class over-romanticizer” (if I may borrow Jenny Rosenstrach’s description of herself in her aforementioned book) can survive with just the essentials. This year, I’m learning to take my celebrations the same way I take my music: unplugged, less cluttered, not so produced. 

This may not be my preference, and the details may look different, but things can still be made special—perhaps, to my surprise, to an even greater degree.