December 2022

May you be wrapped in comfort and contentment

Sarah Ban Breathnach’s

Simple Abundance Between the Lines:

December 2022

CHRISTMAS…WHENEVER I HEAR THE WORD, NO MATTER HOW HOT OR TIRED OR CROSS I MAY BE, I HAVE ONLY TO CLOSE MY EYES, AND SUDDENLY THE AIR IS COLD AND SWEET WITH THE SMELL OF FROST AND FIR; AND THE WORLD IS SO STILL THAT I CAN HEAR THE BELLS AGAIN, FAR OFF ACROSS THE SNOW; AND SO DARK AND QUIET THAT THE ONLY LIGHTS IN IT ARE THE LITTLE GOLDEN FLAMES OF CANDLES AND THE LITTLE SILVER FLAMES OF STARS….A LOST AND LOVELY LAND, WRAPPED IN SNOW AND PEACE AND MYSTERY….WAITING TO COME BACK AT THE SOUND OF A WORD….

--FRANCES NOYES HART (1890-1943)
AMERICAN SHORT STORY AND MYSTERY WRITER

Dearest Friends,

The holidays are upon us and, unfortunately, many of them come wrapped in the ghosts of Christmas Past: loss, lockdown, and Covid. Pray tell, what is the single word to bring the sublime mystery of the holiday season to mind?

“Humbug?” Hmm, sounds familiar, but “Grace” and “Thanks” will work better and faster.  Still, December is such a hodgepodge of conflicting emotions, overwrought expectations, and sheer physical and mental exhaustion it’s no wonder we want to pull the covers up over us for a long winter’s nap.  It’s challenging to see our cups of cheer full through the fog of worry and lack.

Perhaps this is because we are constantly bombarded with daily reports of doom and gloom. Distress is contagious and when it is so deep that we’re afraid to acknowledge or admit it, especially to ourselves, we experience our discomfort through tears, tantrums, moaning, migraine headaches, panic attacks, overspending, and overeating for the next three weeks. Suddenly Ebenezer Scrooge seems like the most maligned and misunderstood figure in literature.

“I can understand people simply fleeing the mountainous efforts Christmas has become,” the Belgian-American memoirist May Sarton confessed in Journal of a Solitude. “But there are always a few saving graces, and finally, they make up for all the bother and distress.”

 So, let’s see if we can’t find a few holiday-saving graces together.  When my daughter was little and I was writing my first book, Mrs. Sharp’s Traditions: Reviving Victorian Family Celebrations of Comfort and Joy, we began enjoying the festive season known as “Keeping Christmas.”  

 The Victorian celebration of Yuletide, which embraced both reverently religious and convivial secular customs, was spread over four weeks and began with Advent, one of the oldest celebrations associated with Christmas.  The Advent season—the four weeks preceding Christmas- was the time set aside for prayer, meditation, festive pastimes, and customs.  Making an Advent wreath, burning a new candle each week, creating a countdown with an Advent calendar, finding the Christmas tree, decorating it with garlands of cranberries and popcorn, building a gingerbread house, baking special treats and heritage food, the heady scent of citrus, cinnamon and cloves, hanging the stockings, reading Christmas stories together, and preparing the nativity scene, seemed to ready hearts both little and big for the month of wonderment. And for those of you celebrating Hanukkah and Kwanza, you have many days of designated festivities.  So, let’s all take deep breaths because honoring the gifts and power of the past is deeply healing.

For indeed, December’s gifts are custom, ceremony, celebration, and consecration of what we cherish and hold dear.  This is the month of miracles: the oil that burns for eight days, the royal son born in a stable, the inexplicable return of Light on the longest, darkest night of the year, the courage of the ancestors with a sip from the cup of unity.

Let the darkness of the world shed new Light as you rediscover old-fashioned reasons for a heartfelt season of comfort and joy, however, you choose to observe it. And write those reasons down in your Gratitude Journal!  Create a new holiday tradition of placing a copy of your December gratitude list in an envelope to be opened next year.   You will be delighted and amazed at the little things that made you so thankful and happy.

 My prayer for all of us is that we embrace the miracle of our authenticity, for it will change how we view ourselves forever.  Our daily round. Our dreams.  Out destinies.

Believe in yourself.  All things are possible to She who believes.

Sending dearest love to you and yours. Call everything that comes your way, especially the unexpected, a “blessing.” And it will become so.

May you be wrapped throughout December 2022 in comfort and contentment.  May my gratitude for your support of my work in the world become a personal blanket of love for you, Babe, to tuck you in close and safe.

 XO

Sarah Ban Breathnach