christmas is quite possibly my favorite time of the year. i’ve compiled a list about it, and christmas sits right up there, just above my birthday month.
there’s a weird sense of joy shining through everyone during this season. i can wish the cashier a merry christmas and have him smile widely back at me. every road is lit up with string lights, shops are full of bright red and green. red is one of my favorite colors, i’m no longer the only person gratuitously sprinkling red through my outfits. it’s like the season was made for me.
i get to meet the people i love when it’s christmastime. family gatherings, my little reader’s birthday, annual carolling with my best friends. the bakery stocks my favorite sweet treat: breudher. i mourn for the countries that haven’t heard of it. there’s christmas cake and christmas pudding and mince pies and fancy christmas dinner.
i hung out with my baby cousins for christmas today. the older one came sprinting to the gate before i had even gotten out of my taxi. there were yells and squeals and embraces. he and his brother had picked the sweetest little mug and saucer as a christmas gift for me. [isn’t it a kind of love, the way the cup holds the tea?] he told me he knows i’ll love my gift. he doesn’t know i’d love anything he gets for me. we danced and sang christmas carols, my little menace hopping around holding my hands, the reader banging on a makeshift drum.
i’ve spent so many days with the people i love. i hosted carolling, i think it’s been seven years? funny how things become traditions. christmas would be empty without it. we brought the tree home, all five of us parading through my neighbourhood. we wouldn’t have survived without my romeo. the rest of us truly just provided moral support. we sang, giggled, fell down laughing. i love my friends. so, so much.
i showed my mother pentatonix christmas music—we spent forty-five minutes down a youtube rabbit hole. my dad had to walk in and tell us that it was late, and to go to bed. later all three of us watched nat king cole, frank sinatra, and countless other people sing yuletide music. we played my grandmother’s favorites, my dad’s favorites, and random other things that looked fun. last christmas sung by a little band in a field full of lights. a girl on an open mic stage singing have yourself a merry little christmas.
christmas also signifies the end of the year. i can’t believe the year is ending. i remember sitting down to write my first substack post of the year like it was yesterday.
i was sick for the majority of the beginning of the month, so i feel like the christmas spirit is only just settling in. we celebrated my dad’s birthday, went for carol services, hung baubles up on the tree. i wrapped christmas gifts and laughed to myself at romeo’s present—and laughed some more when he opened it in front of me.
i’ve been happier recently. i listen to my silly little music, branching out into patsy cline and nat king cole, and maintaining my love for itzy and aespa. i’ve been reading books that have torn into my soul and books that are fuzzy and loving and warm. i try to not think too much about things that don’t go my way. i’m being gentle with myself. i try to love myself a little more. and trying is love. where else would the trying come from?
media interlude—what i’ve read and recent favourites
i watched fellow travelers last week; the last part of my efforts to watch everything jonathan bailey has ever been in. it made me cry for the better part of an hour, and is now one of my favorite shows. as i was watching it, i couldn’t help but think of how much alex claremont-diaz would love it, so now i’m rereading red, white and royal blue. i am but a weak woman. i also hit 86 books for the year. one of my busiest reading years, and i’ve found so many new favorites. lie with me, swimming in the dark, intermezzo, if we were villains—just to name a recent few. i’ve started reading anne carson’s an autobiography of red. i read and adored small things like these by claire keegan, and am very glad that i waited for christmas to read it. have i mentioned that i’m a big believer in the christmas spirit? i also read a tree grows in brooklyn and was absolutely decimated when i finished it. i felt so much for characters i never thought i would be sympathetic toward. i wanted johnny back, i want them all to be happy together.
as for music: short ‘n sweet and fruitcake by sabrina carpenter, jazz by queen, baby i’m yours by arctic monkeys, she’s got you by patsy cline, nat king cole’s christmas album, it’s too late by carole king
i’ve been learning so much about myself recently. what kind of fabrics i like wearing, scents i like smelling, cuts of dresses i like twirling in. i’ve discovered a love for interesting bodycon dresses, a penchant for fresh, spring scents, and a returning obsession with jazz. i’ve been learning about the constellations in the sky, running onto the rooftop in the biting cold, map of the stars in my hands, looking for orion. my dad showed me how to find the north star, the southern cross, the big dipper. i showed him gemini and betelgeuse and the pleiades. i’ve become starry eyed in more ways than one.
i’ve felt so seen recently; from romeo’s gifts that were so wonderfully tailored to be perfect for me to having someone agree with me on my love for persuasion (just as good as pride and prejudice, but tragically slept on by pop culture).
i’ve been cleaning my room for the new year, and i’ve been thinking about new year’s resolutions. i haven’t picked mine yet, but i’m definitely doing them. you can’t be as obsessed with making lists as i am and not make resolutions. i want to keep loving, i want to keep giving. i want to allow myself to just exist, to just be. to not have to force anything for the sake of keeping up pretences. i want to let myself love.
i hope you do too.
have a merry, merry christmas.
all the love, always,
cherry
P.S - I’ve been thinking about immortality, about leaving a mark on the world. the idea of building something that’s going to outlive you. i think i have a healthy amount of ambition, but i think having something that outlives you isn’t about making something that seems grand and vast. i think you live forever in the mind of the people you have loved. i dot my i’s the way someone i knew in school did. i dress wounds the way my best friend taught me to. i sing the harmony to hark the hearald angels sing the way my friend once taught me to. i fix an extra salty curry the way someone once taught my mother to when she was in nairobi. that’s the only immortality that i think will ever matter: the one that other people remember you by. with it, how dare you ever think you are unimportant?
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