'Tis the Season

Yep, it's that time of year again.  The commercials have been running since mid-October.  Retailers are promising us the best prices of the year THIS WEEK ONLY for weeks on end.  And the bloggers are choosing up sides and pronouncing their pro-Christmas/anti-Christmas stance to the world.

You've probably seen something-the interwebz is full of the Spirit of the Season.  Christmas is too commercial.  How to have a "green" Christmas.  Don't say "Merry Christmas" because it's insensitive to those with non-Christian belief systems.  If you don't say "Merry Christmas" you are part of the "War on Christmas".  I have been reading all week about these things, and about each blogger's individual family crises that arise at this time of year for weeks now. 


And I will admit, the stress of the Season was beginning to build in me, too.  I was sulking about the fact that my family is scattered and we cannot spend significant dates together anymore.  I was fretting perfect gifts and mailing dates.  I was stewing over whether or not to decorate the dining room, for crying out loud.  Hell, I was even worrying about the lack of snow in the region!  I mean, how could I feel festive without snow?


Then the barrage began.  I started getting about 25 emails a day from retailers, some of whom I don't even shop with, offering me discounts, free shipping, or a gift card for me if I spend X dollars on gifts.  My Facebook and Twitter are littered with messages to "Keep Christ in Christmas", include non-Christians in my holiday wishes,  and Shop Local (which is grammatically incorrect--they should be exhorting me to shop locally).  I receive a dozen messages a day to boycott the same retailers who are emailing me to tell me to shop with them.  My blogroll is littered with stories of Christmas catastrophes and angst.


So I turn on the TV to escape the negativity.  Along with airings of "A Christmas Story", I find ads for seasonal air fresheners and special edition "holiday" oral care products.  I find myself confronted with news stories of Christmas sales being up, which is good news for the economy.  Or down, which is bad for the economy. I find ads telling me to give $2000 diamonds and big-screen TVs and cars for Christmas because those are the perfect gifts (financing available OAC).  I find celebrity chefs informing me that if I haven't been raising my own turkey since April, I have ruined Christmas dinner.  Or vegans telling me that if I eat turkey, I am a heathen and a monster.  And doctors telling me that eating any holiday-related foods will make me fat.


And don't get me started on the radio.  If I have to hear Justin Bieber singing that he wants to get his shorty under the mistletoe one more time, I may just go screaming fa-la-la-la-la all the way to the nearest mental health institution.


So I walk away from the media.  I meet friends for coffee.  Friends who tell me tales of family conflict over who will be hosting Christmas Eve and who gets Christmas dinner, or who are trying to figure out how they can afford to get both of their kids X-Boxes for their rooms.  I go to the Post Office to mail a non-Christmas-gift package and stand in line for half-an-hour surrounded by people who are angry because they have to stand in line for half-an-hour to mail their gifts.  I go to my local coffee dispensary for a latte and have to run a gauntlet of gifts and frantic shoppers fighting over the last mug with a reindeer on it. 


And this was only the first week of December.  I just wanted to crawl into a hole until January by last weekend.  I really did.


Now, don't get me wrong.  I really love the Festive Season.  I like the warmth and coziness of my home on long, dark winter days.  I love the reasons to see friends that I never seem to find time to visit the rest of the year.  I have an excuse to indulge in day-long knitting sessions, and to shop for things I would never otherwise even look at.  I love the lights, the music, the food, the smell of balsam and cedar.  But it's hard to remember these little joys when you are being bombarded with what you are doing wrong.  After all, what is a candle-lit evening spend sipping mulled wine compared to the "War on Christmas"?  Clearly, there are much bigger things than my simple pleasures.


In spite of my misgivings, I bravely soldiered on.  We ventured out and acquired a Christmas tree (the Boyd household is still a "real" tree establishment).  I turned off the radio and TV and played Christmas carols instead.  I planned baking, and, of course, I knit gifts.  My heart wasn't really in it, though.  I felt like I was just going through the motions.  And that made me really sad.


Then things started to happen.  With a rather deus ex machina-like development, my little quiet Christmas at home became a big family gathering.  It snowed.  I stumbled upon a favorite Christmas album on iTunes.  I finished the Christmas knitting.  I began the Christmas baking.  I remembered the joy of these early winter celebrations.

I think too many of us have bought the Madison Avenue Christmas--the one where the most expensive gift buys us the most love.  The one where we have to start decorating in October, and start shopping the day after.  The one where everyone behaves perfectly and there is peace and love and joy.  And shopping.  Or we have been burned out by the things that go wrong at Christmas.  The same things that go wrong at Easter and Mothers Day and on any given Tuesday, really.  But when there is a family spat or a burnt meal at Christmas, it is apocalyptic.  We lose perspective. Because we have been indoctrinated that this is the Biggest Day of the Year, and if you get this day wrong, you are the ultimate failure.

"The Holidays" have become synonymous with stress.  Because we have let them.  But we can take our joy back.  We can delete those emails about shopping.  We can turn off the advertising.  And the Justin Bieber.

We can celebrate on our own terms, whether that means a Solstice bonfire, or lighting a Menorah, or hosting a Norman Rockwell-esque Christmas for 40.  Or we can not celebrate at all.  We can cozy up in our homes with our loved ones, or we can travel to Grandma's house, or  to Cancun.  We can give big screen TVs, or hand-knit mittens, or no gifts at all.  We can give to the food bank, or we can wait and donate food in June when stocks are low again.  We can eat turkey, or Tofurkey, or roast beef.  We can eat cookies or not eat cookies.  We can like fruitcake.  We can laugh and cry and fight and hug.

Because when you embrace life on your own terms, taking the good with the bad, you will find joy where ever you are.  And whatever the date.

So, whatever celebration you observe at this turn of the seasons, ignore the advertisers, the spammers, the nay-sayers, and the Grinches and celebrate with all you've got!  Or not.  It's up to you.

(Personally, I'm gonna celebrate.)

"Tis the Season...

...for warm, woolly socks,  long nights lit by candles, and marathon knitting!

As I have mentioned before, I am not a big fan of winter weather.  And the last two weeks have reminded me why, with a cold snap of temperatures in the minus forties, before the windchill.  Top that off with a couple of power outages that shut down the fan on the furnace, and you have one cold, cranky woman on your hands.  However, this nastiness has given me an excuse to wear all my little self-indulgent socks that I've been knitting.

Now, I knit a lot of socks.  There is always a sock-in-progress in my purse, for those moments when I am waiting in line, sitting in a coffee shop, or stuck in traffic.  There is usually a half-knit sock on the coffee table, too.  But do I personally have a large collection of hand-knit socks?  Of course not!  I don't really know where all those socks I knit go--kids, Steve's sock drawer, friends, I suppose--but sometime last winter, I realized that I had only 1 pair of my own knit socks, and they were looking pretty threadbare.

So on my travels over the spring and summer, I collected a few little skeins of, shall we say, indulgent sock yarns.  Alpaca blends, silk blends, superwash Merino--handpainted and luxurious.  Mmm, mmm, mmm.  And then I used the hours in airports, on airplanes, and in the passenger seat  to actually use these yummy yarns.  I made myself some socks.

First, the alpaca blend.  Handpainted yarn from Alpaca Plus, 60% alpaca, 20% wool, 20% nylon. The knitting was done in May and June, mostly on planes while I did my little stint in the US.  These socks did sit in a drawer for a couple of months, but I'm wearing them now!  They are warm and have developed a slight halo from the alpaca that makes them feel super soft.

The next pair I knit were a Merino/silk blend from Red Fish Dyeworks.  The four-ply yarn was a little on the heavy end for socks, and a little dear with 5 skeins costing about $85, but I wanted the colors together.  I do have enough for about 2 more pairs of socks, so the cost will even out when I get those guys knit.  I knit these during Fibre Week and into early August, using my basic sock formula and a simple Fair Isle pattern.  I must admit that these are my current favorites--the combination of the silk and the bright colors make me happy every time I put them on.

                                     

And last, but far from least, are these beauties.  There was a great frenzy of knitting in August, getting the first sock finished in about 2 days, then...nothing.  I cast on the second sock in early October and knit about 3 inches of cuff, then...nothing.  Then it got to be 30 below, and I decided to sit in my house and knit.  I finished the second sock on a Sunday afternoon two weeks ago.  The yarn is handpainted by Mary Ann at Three Waters Farm.  I loooove the colors! And these soft, comfy socks have gotten a lot of wear this past couple of weeks.

So, my toes have been warm and very stylish during the cold spell.

The other "up-side", if there could be such a thing when it is 40 below, is that there was no way I was going out into that weather.  This turned out to be an up-side because that meant lots of time at home to spin and knit, and with the Big Holiday fast approaching, this was an added bonus.  I do not buy a lot of gifts anymore, but I do knit and weave a lot of gifts.  The more time at home, the more on top of the Christmas list I get.  There is one Really Big Project that is moving a little slower than I would like, but otherwise, the dreaded Christmas knitting is under control.  (Touch wood!)

The long dark nights and the cold, cold weather have not been very conducive to a festive state of mind around here, but things are looking up.  We are having a heat wave of -23C today, and the Christmas baking is done.  The tree is up, and there are even a couple of gifts wrapped.  I ventured out yesterday to the post office and the mall, two place I usually try to avoid this time of year, and everyone I met was cheerful and helpful.  And the dark drive home at 3:30 p.m. was lit by Christmas lights. 

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

And my toes are warm.