Why I Won't Cancel Christmas

On Joy as an Act of Resistance

This week’s letter is reaching you a little late, please forgive my tardiness!

I really wanted to cancel Christmas this year. 

I’m finding it extraordinarily challenging to feel joy in this season when thousands of Palestinian people are enduring unimaginable loss and suffering. 

It seems cruel to consume frivolously knowing that so many innocent souls are being deprived of basic human needs: water, food, shelter, above all, life.

Dressing up in festive holiday attire when children in Gaza (and many other places across the world) don’t have proper clothes to shield them from the bleak winter feels coldly ironic.

Painting my nails and lips in crimson colors when I pause to consider all of the blood that has been shed in this horrific saga seems foolish.

Rejoicing when I have read so many heartbreaking stories every day for the past 70 days and counting is unconscionable to me.

For these reasons, I really wanted to cancel Christmas this year. However, there are two things that prevented me from doing so:

1. There is my son, Jaad.

2. There is my husband’s big, fat, quasi-Catholic Portuguese family who might actually cancel me if I tried.

And I decided that even amidst the overwhelming grief that has permeated every facet of my life during this time, we deserve joy. 

So nevertheless Rodrigo, (who actually wants to cancel Christmas every year) and I decided we will celebrate. 

We brought out our little Christmas tree and decked the halls of our home. We took Jaad to see the Christmas lights. We made hot chocolate that tasted pretty bad.

Jaad helped me make these watermelon ornaments. And by help I mean he nearly single-handedly destroyed my humble little arts & crafts attempt.

More than anything, we did not want to deprive Jaad of the joy of Christmas. 

Poet, educator and memoirist Toi Derricotte wrote, “Joy is an act of resistance too,” in her poem, The Telly Cycle. You can read a selection of Toi Derricotte’s poems at The Poetry Foundation. 

While this holiday season has been difficult for me to find the joy that Derricotte implores us to, I also know that the holidays, rather than eliciting sentiments of celebration, can be an isolating and emotionally fraught time for many people.

One of my dearest friends, Sevetri, lost her mother just before Christmas over a decade ago. For her, the holidays stand as a reminder of her loss and are filled with longing and reflection.

Yet she remains one of the kindest, most thoughtful and spirited people I know, both during the holidays and beyond. She has been faithful and uplifting in my dark season, encouraging me with words that her Momo (or grandmother) used to say: “Hard times don’t last always.” 

I draw strength from the words of these women and many others and aspire to find joy in the midst of mourning, to remain kind in the face of cruelty, and hopeful in the depth of darkness.

I hope that a desperately awaited ceasefire will come soon.

There is nothing more that I want this Christmas.

And I also hope that no matter what this season elicits for you, that you can find joy in it, whether it be a tiny spark or a blazing flame.

Love,

Summer