Rediscovering the Magic of Imperfect Holidays: Embracing Nostalgia and Simplicity

Driving home last night, my son was impressed with a perfectly laid display of lights on a stately house in our community. It was beautiful, and clearly, it was a light display done by professionals. Looking at this home, I remembered neighboring lights in my childhood community. Bright, bold lights strung along rooflines with random string lights hung on trees and porch posts. Like my son, I found the lights of my childhood mesmerizing and looked forward to their beauty each year. As an adult, I now miss the haphazard display of yesteryears done lovingly by a neighborhood dad more than the perfect precision of professionally hung lights. Maybe it’s nostalgia–but thinking about it, I believe the Christmas season forty years ago was less but more, and in that less, more of it became special. People, not companies, curated their holidays to focus on family, friends, and food. 

Why does the holiday season, with its overwhelming expectations, require so much from us? Why isn't a lopsided Christmas tree a fun family joke and is instead a failure? I’ve fallen prey to this new expectation. I remember using Scotch tape to hang lights on a wall. I thought it was a beautiful addition to my home-crafted decorations (think a glass jar covered with cotton balls to make a snowman). Almost anything can be a visual delight to a child, but I believe what is missing is the homespun nature of the season. My current snowman is a glass cookie jar--too perfect for storing cookies. The twinkle lights are flawless--wrapped carefully around a candle and placed in a beautiful glass candle holder. It’s lovely but retail.

I was a child in the 80s, which wasn’t the epoch of home or merry-making, but the holidays were significantly less commercialized than they are today. Christmas arrived after Thanksgiving. That difference is significant in itself. Holiday decor is not exceptional when arriving in August, going on steroids in October, and staying through early January. I avert my eyes as much as I can until November, but it’s hard to look away when it’s woven throughout the big box store. Commercialized holiday foods mean they live on for much of the year. Eggnog or sparkling cider is not exciting when it is available for half or all of the year, and specialty candies are now available for every significant or insignificant holiday. Christmas comes before the party has been planned and stays until midnight to leave you blue and unfulfilled once again. 

So how can a holiday be taken back when commercialization is over the top in your face? It requires being intentional about how you want to spend the holidays. Open your arms to those good things and say no to things that don’t serve you. Discover what you want–not what the influencers and their partners want to sell you. It could mean taking a break from all the commercial voices to find the quiet sounds of your desires. This quiet could be found while drinking something warm in a chipped mug while looking at the higgledy-piggledy taped display of homemade snowflakes on your smudged living room window. Absolute perfection.