Holidays comfort us in their regularity and rituals. The old recipes and traditions repeat themselves across the years, always there for us in an uncertain world. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday in this respect. It has good themes (thankfulness and reflection) and an admirable simplicity (get friends and family together for a giant feast of comfort food.) It has brought me great happiness from the family Thanksgivings at my aunt and uncle’s house growing up in Nebraska to “Friendsgivings” in grad school, including one in London when I was doing dissertation research in Germany. I celebrated it with a friend in Brixton and introduced the locals to this most American of events. Thousands of miles from my family, Thanksgiving still worked its magic.
Right before this year’s Thanksgiving, however, the old happy feelings just weren’t there. Tuesday, riding home on the commuter train, I had a moment of existential horror. The holidays can comfort us in their regularity and rituals, but I suddenly felt overwhelmed by the thought that I was repeating the same old cycle until the day I would die. I knew once Thanksgiving was over, there would be another round of miserable winter months, and after enduring them, I would have to suffer again in less than a year, and repeat that experience year after year after year after year.
I wondered if this was the same old midlife crisis stuff. My thoughts were the kind that come with middle age, that moment when you realize the future you spent your youth planning is happening right now and that the rest of your life is going to look a lot like the present. You hear doors to new possibilities slamming shut every single day until there aren't any left. I was kind of shocked by my horror and Thanksgiving dread because I had wrestled with middle-aged doubts before and had come out of it satisfied with the life I ended up with.
Upon further reflection, I realized that my sadness actually stemmed from the missing chairs at the proverbial Thanksgiving table. In the last decade, I have lost many friends and family members. I lost some to death, and some to falling out, which can feel like a kind of death, but with an extra layer of guilt. The deaths almost all took place in the late fall and early winter, so the sudden cold in the air was hitting the face of my memories hard, reminding me of funerals under the dismal November and December Nebraska skies. I also thought about the dark days of the pandemic, watching my Aunt Sue's funeral in Texas over a live stream, bawling my eyes out on my back porch between teaching Zoom classes.
This is no ordinary Thanksgiving, this is our first post-pandemic Thanksgiving. We have emerged from those dark days in a state of traumatized denial. For understandable but deeply unhealthy reasons, we are all going on as if nothing happened. We pretend as if a million people didn't die and our way of life wasn’t completely upended. The denial is attractive as a way to move on, but it feels like all the sacrifices I made in those dark days have added up to nothing. Heck, considering how much teachers have been villainized nowadays, my sacrifices have added up to less than nothing. I guess I should have taken whole the day of my Aunt Sue's funeral off instead of thinking it was necessary to work twelve hours a day to adapr my teaching practice to the pandemic’s demadns.
After my moment of profound dread and sadness Tuesday, I threw myself into useful physical activity the next day. (Speaking of family traditions, this is a folk mental health remedy in mine.) I raked the leaves, got our malfunctioning toilet replaced, cleaned the house, baked a pie, and went for a long walk. I felt a lot better, and ended up enjoying my Thanksgiving day with my wife’s family at our house.
In his Reflections, Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius offers some good advice that I managed to put to work. Focus on the thing in front of you instead of your other nagging thoughts, and do that thing that needs to be done. Thanksgiving had to be hosted, the house had to be cleaned, the meal had to be made. At the end of the day, the dishwasher humming, the turkey carcass in the trash, and a glass of wine in my hand, I felt the comfort and contentment that seemed so far away two days before.
It’s not just the holiday rituals that provide comfort, but the work of the holidays, too. I know I will be complaining a lot less about the work that goes into Christmas this year, since that work will keep me focused on the task at hand, rather than all the people I dearly miss who aren’t coming back. Instead of dreading a repeat the cycle, I am relishing the break from the gray drudgery of daily life, a far worse repetitive treadmill. You could even say I am thankful for it. I hope you too found your moments of comfort this holiday.
Thanks Jason. I too am missing---for many reasons (not all death)---a few faces in my family and friend circle. Your post reminds me of that nagging truth: we can never go back.