At the Darkest Point of the Year
I have always loved Christmas.
Not because of abundance or spectacle, but because it created space for a different quality of attention - slower, more deliberate, devoted to warmth and connection.
Growing up, Christmas was prepared for slowly. Quietly. Sometimes months in advance. In summer, my sister and I embroidered gifts, shaped clay into small ceramic objects, sewed, folded origami decorations and cards. Each piece was made with a particular person in mind - a way of holding them in our attention long before December arrived.
In winter, my mother baked. Entire weeks devoted to it. One year Austrian Springerle, another gingerbread, another panettones - rising in the sauna, because at the time we were living in Finland. I don't know what her experience of that season truly was. I suspect it carried stress, pressure, and a great deal of invisible labour. But what I remember is the quiet creativity, the sense of devotion, the feeling that Christmas was something crafted rather than consumed.
We were a diplomatic family, often far away from friends and relatives. These gestures were a way of bridging distance - of staying connected across geography. Christmas, for me, became associated with attention, care, and warmth rather than excess.
As an adult, I carried that essence with me.
Christmas became a time to gather friends around a table, to cook good food, to play music, to make sure no one was alone or without somewhere warm and welcoming to be. I always found myself checking in: does everyone have a place to go? Creating space for connection felt more important than any particular tradition.
My Christmas tree tells this story. Every decoration has been given to me by someone I love - friends, family, students - from all over the world. Egypt, Finland, Indonesia, Mexico. The tree is not styled; it is inhabited. It holds relationship. It connects us even when we cannot be in each other's presence.
Of course, the season can still be busy. The end of term, loose ends, practicalities that don't pause simply because it's December.
But I've been thinking about a conversation with a friend recently. She dreads Christmas. I watched her face as she talked about it - drawn, exhausted at the mere thought. The family gatherings she feels required to attend. Moving from place to place, activity to activity. Things that feel empty to her. That drain her instead of nourishing her.
"I don't want any of it," she said. "But I don't know how not to do it."
I sat with that. The weight of obligation so heavy it erases the possibility of choice. The belief that the season demands certain things of us, regardless of what our bodies actually need.
It made me wonder: when did we forget that we get to choose?
I've found that where I place my attention matters more than how much I have to do. The cooking, the gathering, the checking in with friends - these aren't obligations I perform. They're how I stay connected to what's alive. The busyness doesn't drain me because it's in service of something that nourishes.
I like to remember this season is the solstice - the darkest point of the year, when nature slows, withdraws, goes quiet. I feel it in what my body wants: warming spices, slow-cooked stews, long walks in the winter sun, warm saunas. The urge to hibernate, to turn inward, to soften. When we override that impulse with relentless activity, something in us strains. The imposed rhythm can feel almost violent.
Winter asks for slowness. For warmth. For rest. For connection.
It asks us to tend what is alive beneath the surface, to regroup, to listen for what wants to emerge next. Not in the language of goals or resolutions, but in the quieter language of longing and truth.
Perhaps Christmas, at its heart, is not about doing more - but about remembering what matters. About choosing presence over performance. About letting the darkness be a place of gestation rather than something to escape.
At the darkest point of the year, life is not stopping. It is gathering itself.
