It's only one day
Yes, you can survive being alone on a holiday
If one thing has become exceedingly clear through the repeated (and mostly ignored) pleas for people to just stay put and keep to themselves over the holidays it’s that Americans a) have a hard time following directions and b) have an even harder time being alone.
Maybe it’s because being alone is often confused with being lonely. Or perhaps it’s just the scary proposition of having too much time to sit with our own thoughts. Our minds can be scary places in which to linger. And now, more than ever, why the hell would you want to? We’ve got phones and feeds, Netflix and TikTok, to drown out every stray thought, even the slightest chance at reflection.
We worry about tradition, who are we without tradition, except people who definitely bitch about it every year but this one apparently? Who are we if we don’t torture ourselves traveling so we can complain endlessly to our friends via text while flooding those previously mentioned feeds with the brochure version? Who are we if not completely prepared to die on each and every hill presented to us?
I’m here to tell you that a day like Christmas or Thanksgiving or New Year’s Day, your birthday or your wedding day, are all still just ... days. They all have the same amount of hours. They all contain sunrises and sunsets just as much as those Mondays you dread and the day off you’ve been looking forward to. They feel different, I know. I’ve spent lots of holidays alone.
My first year at UCLA was a hard one. I arrived there as a transfer student, big-haired and politically unaware, and didn’t fit in (as you might imagine). I wanted to go home for Thanksgiving, to see my friends most of all. My father cashed in airline miles back when those would get you somewhere, and I flew cross country the Wed before Thanksgiving, back to LA that Sunday. I have a distinct memory of trying to bustle and push my way through the shoulder-to-shoulder traveling masses that Sunday afternoon of Thanksgiving break, carrying too many things, sweating and probably hungover, and having one crystal clear thought: I never want to do this again.
I recently went through boxes of old photos (you see a few of them in this newsletter, poorly scanned, another thing I apparently don’t care about this year!) and came across one I remember well. I’m in my apartment in Los Angeles, my roommate gone home for Christmas. I stayed. I’m an only child and I had spent so much of my life alone at that point and rarely felt lonely because of it. But even I was afraid of what a holiday alone would feel like. Would it kill me? Was I a loser? Would the world end?
I took a timer photo of me, black and white, wearing a bathrobe and face mask and a smile, next to our Christmas tree in our spartan apartment. I remember how quiet that day felt because, obviously, no one is actually from Los Angeles. The streets were clear, there was little noise, I could hear the birds, smell the flowering vines. I had the recurring thought, this is only one day. And when that day ended, Christmas was over, I had spent it alone, and incredibly I didn’t die from it.
One of the aspects of this strange holiday season is how much it’s put the brakes on overwhelming forward motion. Usually December, in a bit of Christian irony, is actual hell. There’s the making of all the goddamn magic, the school concerts and plays, mixed in with all the (god willing) adult parties, all the associated hangovers, all the work deadlines. The pressure to shop and ship, bake and “be present,” make cards and make haste. But with my calendar being wiped clean and that coinciding with a December when I’m also off from work and finished with my book, my head is possibly the clearest it’s ever been.
This mental opening has allowed other memories to bubble up. Yesterday I thought about how I used to go to a dive bar in Hollywood with my friend Brian on the night before Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving night, Christmas Eve, and/or Christmas night. He coined it The Island of Misfit Toys. There’d be the skinny rockers, the old alcoholics. Perhaps an aging D-list starlet, a slumming celeb, and kids like us who either weren’t going home (me) or desperately needed a break from family (him). The bar would be dark of course, strung with old lights and tinsel garland half falling down (not unlike some of the patrons), “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” sprinkled amongst the metal. Although there was a sense of being adrift those nights, there was also a sense of secret belonging. I remember thinking are we all sitting here, wondering who all these other losers are, forgetting we’re here too? It still felt cooler than any traditions we might’ve had otherwise. And it sure beat flying.
Brian is dead now, six years ago, sudden. If this was a normal year, a magic-making year, a year that was jammed to the tits with plans, I wouldn’t be thinking about him at all. The last time I saw him was at least twenty years ago, any time I found myself back in Los Angeles we’d make plans and he’d never show up. Just like, straight up stand me up. The older you get, the more you get used to certain people in your life who say they’d love to see you but then never materialize. You accept it mostly without anger, sometimes you just feel sad and disappointed (but anger is easier), often you understand it. I have loved thinking about him and that time again. I can taste the cigarettes we smoked, the drinks we ordered, I can see the lights. I can feel the belonging. I can feel his friendship and all of the laughing we did together. He was such a good friend to me all those years when we were never anything more than friends, only thick as thieves. He was one of my biggest fans and I was his. I was lucky. We were family. If I had stuck to tradition, I wouldn’t have those memories at all.
We worry so much about abandoning tradition, even for one year. We don’t know how to be flexible because this is just how it’s always been done. We feel like if we don’t put this ornament on the tree or have this dessert at Thanksgiving or unwrap the presents in just this order that everything’s going to go to shit. Let me tell you something sweetheart, it’s all already gone to shit.
Stay put. Stay home. Stay only with the people you already live with. Stay only with yourself. It is only one day. I promise you, the world will not end. Or if it does, it certainly won’t be because of this. Go through old photos. Think of those who are gone, which this year includes an incomprehensible and criminal toll. Think of those you are lucky — so lucky — to still have with you now. Walk the dog. Take the naps. Be happy you don’t need a cab, an Uber, or a designated driver. Make and eat whatever the hell you actually like for your holiday dinner. Watch whatever the hell you want on TV. Think about how wonderful it can be, even when it is hard, to be alive. Help others stay alive by doing nothing. When else is it possible to do nothing and still be a hero?
NEW FROM ME:
• BOOK! My second book, BUT YOU SEEMED SO HAPPY, officially has a pub date! September 21, 2021 and isn’t it incomprehensible to imagine what the world will even be like 286 days from now? No preorder information is available yet but, whew, here we go people.
• McSWEENEY’S: I’ll have two McSweeney’s updates in my next newsletter later this month! Look at me with all this free time on my hands! I am absolutely not spending at least 20% of it drinking alcohol-based coffee drinks and standing around a fire! (That is exactly what I’m doing). Anyway, keep an eye out for that.
• GOOD BOYS: On the day the election was called for Joe Biden, what was supposed to be my first day working on the final pass on my manuscript, I instead spent wandering the streets of Burlington watching the celebrating, drinking a glass of overpriced red wine on a balcony while sitting in a plastic chair, watching the sunset, then writing this. NO REGRETS. “Good boys return to the White House”
THINGS FROM ELSEWHERE:
• GIVE BOOKS! It’s impossible not to feel for every author who had a book come out this year. While everyone was buying books, new books were getting lost in the news wood chipper of 2020. Emma Straub (author and owner of Books Are Magic) has been compiling a list of 2020 books, so get on over to that list and find some gems!
• HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS: 25 years of the best Thanksgiving movie ever. Yes it is. Yeah. It is. “Jodie Foster On The Joys Of ‘Home For The Holidays’ 25 Years Later”
• THE MYTH OF THE MALE BUMBLER: An incredible article from two years ago (I’ve had a lot of tabs opened since I started writing my book! So sue me! Please don’t actually do that!) An excerpt: “Male bumblers are an epidemic. These men are wide-eyed and perennially confused. What's the difference, the male bumbler wonders, between a friendly conversation with a coworker and rubbing one's penis in front of one? Between grooming a 14-year-old at her custody hearing and asking her out? The world baffles the bumbler. He's astonished to discover that he had power over anyone at all, let alone that he was perceived as using it. What power? he says. Who, me?” Read it here.
• FRIENDSHIP: I’ve been devouring books (not all that great!) and articles (much better!) on friendship (a criminally glossed-over subject in my humble opinion). Worth a read, both in The Atlantic: “The Pandemic Has Remade Friendship” and “What If Friendship, Not Marriage, Was at the Center of Life?”. If you only have to choose one to read, read that last one. It provides some pretty wonderful historical perspective.
• FERTILITY: In case you missed it, this is a stunning essay and to quote someone on Twitter (I can’t remember who now, sorry!), she wrote the absolute shit out of this piece. “False Labor” by Lena Dunham in Harper.
• PICKY EATERS: I have posted and shared this article many times because even though I will literally never eat swordfish in my life, I so appreciated the openness, honesty, and utter lack of pretension from the wonderful Gabrielle Hamilton when it comes to kids and food (and, as a former childhood picky eater, current adult picky eater, and parent of one other picky eater, just want to let you know that sensitivities around food are real and you and/or your kids having the palate and adventurous spirit of a professional chef unfortunately does not make you a better person!) “Buttered Swordfish for Finicky Kids — With Plenty of Sauce for the Adults” in The New York Times.
• LOVE, MARRIAGE, SACRIFICE: Whew, sorry for putting everyone through the wringer but this is another beautiful and devastating essay! I’m afraid you’re going to have to read it so you can linger on many incredible sentences like this one: “She is a moon in furious orbit around a collapsing star.” Read: “The Promise That Tested My Parents Until the End” by Christopher Solomon in GQ.
• RACISM: If you, like me, grew up, went to school, and have worked in predominantly white spaces perhaps you’ve also been a silent bystander to much, much more casual racism than overtly racist behavior. Start here: “How to Be an Active Bystander When You See Casual Racism.”
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