How to cure yourself of the holiday blues
It feels nice, and a little strange
Love notes from Siel is a newsletter about love, writing, and the nomad life from me, Siel.
Dear friend —
I recommend landing in a new city just as the winter holiday season begins. Everywhere you go there’ll be sparkly lights and year-end sales and sweet treats. And end-of-year parties too — final meetups to let people get together one last time to reminisce and celebrate — which you can crash for funsies as if you’ve been part of the crew all along.
For example: After getting to Barcelona I enrolled in a Spanish language school for literally the final week of classes. There were two sessions left before the school closed down for the holiday weeks but I didn’t let that deter me — I went to those and the school’s holiday party too, held at a bar called Oriental Express where specialty drinks were delivered by a little choo-choo train. I drank one pistacholada and got into a loopy conversation with a 24-year-old from NYC, she was in Spain for the month but planned to fit in trips all over Europe during that time too, for xmas she’d go visit her ex-boyfriend’s sister in Oslo —
I also joined a book club. That holiday party was held not in a quiet space for book discussion as per usual but at a loud bar for a more festive atmosphere. No one minded that I was a newbie — in fact a half dozen other women had joined for the first time. I met a woman from Brazil who’d been living in Portugal for a number of years but had just moved to Barcelona to start her PhD in bioethics. She’d moved her Australian shepherd with her to all three countries —
Wherever I go in the world, I come across fascinating women, cobbling together one-of-a-kind life journeys that follow their personal whims and desires —
That said, this xmas season is turning out to be one of the most traditional I’ve had in a long time, the kind with shopping excursions, visits to local holiday fairs, and gift-tagged presents under a lit-up tree in the living room. Later today I’ll will take the train to Tarragona to spend xmas with my boyfriend and his parents and siblings and nephews. We’ll probably eat turrones and play Catan late into the night.
It feels nice, and a little strange, to be ensconced in plans like these. It’s a very different experience from my Thanksgiving this year which I didn’t celebrate at all — in fact it passed me by without notice because I was in Buenos Aires.
If you want to cure yourself of the holiday blues, get thee to a country that doesn’t celebrate said holiday. Thanksgiving used to make me sad in the past — about the difference between the plans I had and the plans I wanted to have. I think it’s a common feeling, to feel stressed or lonely or disappointed by one’s Thanksgiving experience. That is, if you’re in the U.S. — because everywhere else in the world, Thanksgiving Day is just another Thursday.
And it can be freeing, to not celebrate a holiday but instead enjoy just another day. There’s less pressure. You can do the things you need to and want to do, with other people or without, sans judgment from yourself or others. Just another Thursday is a good day to go to go for an exploratory walk or take a long bath or call up a friend or write a love note —
How do we come up with all these rules about the “right” experience — whether for Thanksgiving or xmas or birthdays or weekends or travel? When we’re alone it’s easy to want to be with others and when with others to want to be alone, or to be with different people, or to be with the same people but doing a different thing, or to be in a different place.
I hope this love note finds you in the right place at the right time, doing what you’re meant to be doing, with whom you’re meant to do them with.
Happy holidays —
Love,
Siel
P.S. My new passport arrived earlier this week!
Three links you might love
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How to return to old haunts. How will it feel to be out in the world alone again? Fabulous.
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Loved this love note? Please heart and share it.
Yay! You got your passport!