Christmas in a time of Covid

After one of the most difficult years most of us can remember, I think we could all do with a little moment to stop and celebrate, don’t you? This online magazine - a bumper version of my monthly newsletter - contains ideas for celebrating and sharing the joys of Christmas, even if you are in lockdown; mindful gift ideas and DIY projects; tips for writing Christmas letters; 12 festive envelope templates for you to colour in and post; and loads more.

Flip through the magazine below (if you hover over the magazine window you’ll see an option to make it full screen), or click “download” to print and read it the old-fashioned way, and to use any of the resources and templates inside. (Give it time if it’s slow to download - it’s a big file!)

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White space

This afternoon, after having had only two hours of sleep last night, I walked into the local pharmacy and leaned on the counter with an air of desperation, announcing, “I have a cough that is keeping me awake all night. I heard from a friend who heard from her sister about some medicine I can take that stops the spasms. She says it is magic, but also that you probably won’t want to sell it to me. She thinks it starts with R.”

The pharmacist laughed out loud and said, “I know exactly what you’re talking about.” Then she handed me a bottle and added, “Welcome to the wonderful world of R—.”

So I am optimistic about actually getting some sleep tonight.

Ask me in the morning how that went.

I know why I have the persistent cough, it’s no great mystery. It’s because I’ve been working way too many hours and going out way too often and staying up way too late for either my or my body’s liking… all of which is wont to happen at this time of year.

This situation is somewhat ironic because, just last week, I shared my “12 Calm Days of Christmas” booklet online, which is all about building mindfulness, white space and self-care into the silly season. If only I’d listened to my own advice, I probably wouldn’t need to take anything that starts with R before I go to bed tonight.

Why are we so bad at listening to ourselves? Or to applying to our own lives what comes so naturally when it’s time to care for others? My mother always used to say, cleaners have the messiest houses. Librarians watch a lot of television. Teachers have the most unruly children. Or something to that effect.

(Which, come to think of it, doesn’t say a lot about me since I’m neither a cleaner, a librarian nor a teacher, but my house is a mess, Netflix is getting a solid workout, and my children have been known to show unruly tendencies. Sometimes. Bless them.)

But you take my point, don’t you? It’s a lot easier to give advice than follow it. Or to put it another way, when you do something all day, the last thing most of us want to do when we get home is to keep on doing that same thing for a new crowd.

Not that I walk around all day telling people to be mindful and look after themselves… but I do blather on about those things quite a bit, don’t I. I even wrote a feature article for Good magazine a couple of months ago, on the importance of building ‘white space’ into our days. Stop typing and just DO, Naomi.

So I have decided to make myself accountable to you. There are things in life that we can control, and things we can’t control. The fact of the matter is that this time of year brings a lot of social engagements and, despite my introverted soul wanting to shrink away from them, it would be rude (and possibly not healthy) to hermit myself completely. So here is what I will do:

• Starting tomorrow morning, I will be obsessive about my nutrition. Life gets so exhausting and busy that it’s all too easy to fall into bad food habits because I’m too tired to cook, but right now my body needs extra TLC and so I’m going to fuel it properly. Even if the Christmas cake I baked is realllllly good. Even if ‘salad’ means just plonking a few chopped up veggies on a plate: there’s a whole lot more nutrition on that plate than in the nachos I order from around the corner.

• Starting tonight, on the nights I’m NOT going out, I will be in bed, lights out, by 10pm. At the latest. That’s going to be a tricky one to stick to but I’m strict with my children, so it’s time to be strict with myself.

• When we are out, I will be more conscious of the way the waiters top up my wine. I’ll stick to a three-drink maximum, no matter what.

• This weekend, I will tidy my house. Not just the usual clean, a proper tidy up, where things get sorted and put away in their special places. I find a clean environment helps me clear my mind but, also, that the opposite is true: a cluttered environment leaves me feeling stressed and out of control.

OK I’m sure this list could grow, but I actually want to achieve these things, so I’m going to be kind to myself and stop there. Please feel free to hold me accountable, and ask me how I get along with these goals as we creep towards Christmas. It helps me to know you are there. (Just click on the title of this blog post to view it in your browser if you’d like to comment, or else feel free to email me directly).

And in the meantime, how are you going, dear friend? What does December look like for you? How do you cope with the pressures of this season?

ps. Clearly the photographs in this blog post are not from the weather we are experiencing here in Australia. Last week, it was 41 degrees Celsius, with high winds. (Then again, tonight it will get down to 8 with rain, so I guess you never can tell.) I snapped these photographs in Scotland almost a year ago - some of them from a moving car which is why you see a bit of blur - and right now they are just the clean, white, open spaces I need to see, in order to breathe.

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A seasonal shift

The weekend before we left the village forever, they turned the Christmas lights on. I stepped out of our apartment in the twilight to go to the post office, and hadn’t taken two steps before the entire town burst back into light.

Christmas trees on every corner glowed with colour, rainbow twinkle lights floated in swathes above the cobblestones, intricate patterns of light made snowflakes above crossroads, and every laneway seemed touched with magic.

I raced back from the post office to call the family outside, and together we strolled through the wonderland, marvelling at each new discovery. It seemed as though almost the entire village had had the same idea, we were all, young and old, wandering the town in joy, and the streets were filled with the sounds of “Ooh!” and “Ahh!”, punctuated by church bells.

It felt like a fitting farewell to this town that we had called home for almost four months. From summer to winter, we watched the town transition from full bloom (and full to the brim) to a kind of turning-inwards, resting and readying for winter, and every new face on our town has been lovely.

In the summer, the streets hummed with tourists. The glacerie did a roaring trade, with towering coronets of triple-flavoured home-made ice creams, and markets filled with handicrafts lined the street underneath the ancient clock tower, every day. A horse and carriage clopped underneath our window every hour or so, and a miniature train carrying retired German tourists chugged over the cobblestones all day long.

We would wander down to the river in the sweltering heat, and sit on the stone edges with our feet in the water to cool off, or take a ride on the canal boat that took tourists to Lehon and back all day long (always telling the story, in two languages, of how if something happened to the horses pulling the canal-boats in the past, the captain’s wife would have to don a harness and drag that boat along the little river herself).

On Wednesdays, the square beneath our window, in front of the ancient basilica, would fill with stalls of antique toys and books and curios for sale. Scout wore a hand-woven “love knot” around her wrist, woven by a local woman at the market. Ralph found a red tin van that had once held chocolates. I picked up a 300-year-old writing desk, and a hand-painted ceramic kugelhopf mould from a famous artists in Alsace.

Everything in Dinan was alive. The geraniums in the pots outside our windows burst into extravagant colour, and the dancing light seemed to filter inside, even before dawn. There were jazz concerts in the square below us, sending music into our living room through the open windows until after midnight, while we ate crackers and cheese and sipped rosé, and I painted the memories of our grand adventure.

And then the wind turned cold.

As the seasons changed, so did the village. The glacerie closed its shutters for the last time in the year, as did our favourite boulanger, and many of the shops and restaurants taped handwritten signs to their closed shutters: fermé jusqu'en décembre (closed until December).

It was a lot easier to move around the town without the crowds, and the children never had to wait for a space on the tourniquet in the playground, and the cafes and bistros that did remain open started selling vin chaud (hot wine).

The breeze picked up, and the trees changed colour. Gold dominated, but there was also brown, orange, and crimson in the mix. On windy days, the sky would rain colour. We collected conkers and walnuts, and roasted found chestnuts. The chemin des pommiers (apple path) below the castle walls was slick with fallen, rotting apples, a picturesque death-trap to any who ventured down that steep slope.

I walked the children to childcare in the golden glare of sunrise, and home again in the dark. On days off, we started frequenting a deli where the paninis were particularly good, and the proprietress was super-friendly towards the children. In fact, everyone grew friendlier, now that the throngs and crowds had melted away.

And then one dark afternoon, they turned the Christmas lights on.