Finding the light
An Alice Walker essay and prompts for decolonising the festive period
Around this time when it seems customary to start thinking about end of year festivities (and, let's face it, like it or loathe it, it gets earlier each year that this comes into our awareness) I whip out one of Alice Walker's books to remind myself of her essay My Face to the Light: Thoughts about Christmas, Seed Catalogs like Paper Flowers which I find a soothing balm of a reminder that we get to choose how we mark this next turning of the wheel.
The incongruence of Christmas with systemic oppression
Walker describes her childhood Christmases, growing up in rural American South under racial and economic oppression and not questioning as a child the bizarre notion of a white Father Christmas bestowing generosity on her Black neighbourhood when the rest of the year, their experience of the world was anything but reflective of this. As an adult, she describes discovering what Christmas really is:
"...it is the day of the winter solstice and was originally celebrated on the twenty-first or twenty-second of December, the day when the sun, the light, begins to come back in the Northern Hemisphere. In a way you could say it is the first day spring becomes possible. The birth of Jesus has been affixed to the seeming rebirth of the sun, but the sun has been worshipped since many millenia before Christ. Undoubtedly it has been worshipped, by plants and single-cell animals, since the very beginning of the planet's life."
Photo by martin lea on Unsplash
She describes how this lesson changed forever how she felt about Christmas, and how she chose to celebrate the festive period in ways which felt more meaningful to her.
This fed into my fledging efforts to be more intentional with how to spend this time and I find this often comes up in client work at this time of year hence my sharing what might be useful prompts to consider.
Invitations to consider
Do I want to celebrate at this time of year? If so, what is it I want to celebrate?
What meaning do I attach to this time of year habitually? What meaning can I intentionally create instead?
Do we do presents, arrange a circle and buy for just one person each, or dispense with them completely?
Are presents simply things needed (such as winter coats and thermals) rather than desired indulgences (like the latest tech or fashion item we don't actually need)?
Can I shop secondhand, make gifts or share experiences instead of buying new?
What to eat - do I actually like turkey or would I prefer something entirely different?
Where do I go - could I go out or go away? What might that be like?
What new traditions can I create around my genuine interests?
Would I like to forego eating around a table for instead sharing the experience of volunteering time over the festive period?
Can I discuss this with family members in preparation for next year?
What boundaries need to be discussed for get-togethers?
Do presents have to be a surprise? Who is this really for? Is it helpful?
One year, I took my children to a charity shop and asked them to choose a toy with the understanding they could play with them for the whole day and then they'd be wrapped up for Christmas - I think these toys will never be let go of because of this treasured memory (which perhaps felt somewhat novel). This can be a great way to relieve some of the pressure for children at what can be a really difficult time of year. Particularly true for neurodivergent children.
Which traditions work for you and your kin? Which can you think about dispensing with in favour of ones that resonate better? What conversations need to happen to start to weave the future festive seasons you'd love to be having? What grieving might need to take place for festive seasons past or ideas you're holding onto for what this time of year means?
Maybe you will find inspiration, like I do, from how Alice Walker describes her celebration:
"I would never dream of killing anything for it; or even thinking of it as an event that requires the least bit of frantic activity. For me, the excitement about the sun's return begins to build several days in advance of the winter solstice, and my celebration consists of a heightened awareness of the losing ground of winter, no matter how cold the days might be, and an intense expectation of the day itself, which, when it arrives is greeted by my face turned up to the (if I am lucky) sunny heavens. The days after are spent in quiet appreciation of the possibility of another spring (my favorite of all seasons) and thoughts of seeds and planting. I lie late in bed, thinking of the sun as of a long-travelling friend who is at last coming back home to me, my collection of seed catalogs covering me like paper flowers.
It isn't that I don't think of Christmas at all anymore as a possible birthday for Jesus Christ (though it's true that I never think of Santa Claus, faith in whom, it seems to me, has been permanently lost), but I think of it more as the rebirthday of every being that longs for the return of the warmth of the sun and loves the light. Surely, it is my rebirthday too.”
May all our rebirthdays be blessed and bright.
