fresh hell

Charlie Warzel:

But this isn’t about Christmas or Hanukkah or any specific celebration. It’s about finding ways to make it through the winter doldrums.

Right now, that’s more challenging than ever. The holiday comedown was hard enough before COVID stresses, variant surges, and school closures. And while plenty of people out there are embracing normalcy, millions more with lower risk tolerance are hunkering down to protect themselves or loved ones or to keep the hospital system from straining. It is, for many, a lonely time.

“It’s been such a difficult few years for everyone,” Jami Warner, the executive director of the American Christmas Tree Association, told me. She said that the Christmas-tree industry has seen a substantial uptick in sales during the pandemic years, even despite supply-chain challenges. Warner also assured me that I was not alone and that people are leaving their artificial trees up longer and longer—sometimes year-round. “We so desperately need that light in our lives these days,” she said. “And people are realizing that having them around is a wonderful, uplifting thing.”

The Lady of the House passed this on as a trollish joke. And given that this is the Atlantic — someone recently (and accurately) described it as the magazine of choice for neurotic progressives in New York and D.C. — I’m happy to treat it in that spirit. But as near as I can tell, the self-pity and therapeutic mawkishness are in earnest. You know what’s worse than all good things coming to an end? Retreating to a fantasy world in order to cope with it. How have so many people made it to quasi-adulthood without learning such a basic lesson? Why are so many people so unembarrassed to present themselves as weak and broken, in constant need of comforting reassurance?

Meghan O’Gieblyn:

Repetition is a component of all ascetic traditions, and I like to think that my own habits constitute something like a spiritual discipline. My nature bends toward listlessness and disorder. Resolving to do the same thing each day, at the same time, has given my life a center, insulating me from the siren song of novelty and distraction that has caused me so much unhappiness in the past. I live a monotonous life, which is not to say a tedious one. (I believe, with Rilke, that those who find life dull are not poet enough to call forth its riches.) And I imagine that these tightly circumscribed days are radiating, with each turn of the circle, into widening arcs, amounting to a life whose ties are deeper, whose direction is more certain.

For several years, we’ve had a Christmas Eve ritual of going to Boar’s Head Resort in the evening for a contemplative stroll. It’s a combination of a wealthy neighborhood, an office park, and a small hotel, among other things, owned by the university. The hotel and many of the adjacent buildings had a Tudor design that I’ve always loved, and the decorations at Christmas were always delightful. The restaurant and hotel were always open on Christmas Eve, and occasionally a church group would rent one of the meeting rooms for a holiday party, but mostly, it was easy to stroll around in the dark without seeing anyone else, beyond the occasional member of the cleaning staff, or a late delivery driver finishing their work for the day. There’s something especially poignant about memories that are specific to one day per year. Every time I run my hand along the thick oak beam that serves as a handrail on the footbridge, or wander around the big office complex listening to the gravel crunch underfoot, or sit on one of the swinging benches overlooking the lake, or peek in the entryway to the building with all the nutcrackers and elves surrounding the fireplace, I’m struck all at once by a strange but pleasant sense of temporal disconnect. It’s been a year already, but it feels like an instant. The memory is so vivid, it’s as if I never left.

This year, the Lady of the House drew my attention to an ominous sight on their webpage: an official event called the Winter Wander. I was leery, but I don’t give up my rituals without a fight. Maybe it would be possible to still partake of a free, and free-range, walk around without having to participate in a garish group event, at twenty bucks a head, promising grotesqueries such as “multiple Instagram-worthy moments.” Well, the pictures don’t do it justice: it’s even worse in person than it looks online. Crowds of people in what used to be an empty parking lot. Warm white lights replaced by gaudy blue/green/purple atrocities that would have been more appropriate for a Haunted Hayride-style attraction. A food truck. And “best” of all, a light sculpture in the shape of a giant boar. We drove through, past the directions of the parking lot attendant, muttering oaths of disbelief, before turning around and heading home.

Planet of the Apes Gif

I understand that the plague has forced businesses which depend on travel and tourism to prostitute themselves for funds, but this…this was “we had to destroy Christmas Village in order to save it.” The Director of Special Events says this was the inaugural year for this event, which obviously carries the implied threat of future assaults. My secret, sacred retreat has become a monstrous megachurch. I suppose I’m condemned to exile now, wandering the earth, or at least the neighborhoods within a thirty-minute drive or so, in search of a new Christmas Eve ritual, where the lights are subdued, the decorations are tasteful, the footpaths are deserted, and the architecture is Tudor-style.