AliceFraser
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Christmas missive
🕑 Added 2022-12-25 01:19:21 +0000 UTCIn the bleak midwinter, Yule / Christmas / light festivals / Hanukkah (I’ll use Christmas as a shorthand for winter solstice fest) serves as a guide-light/lamp-post* to draw our anticipation and hope for the future towards the black hole of the year and through into the second half of the gloom with its dawn on the horizon and the possibility of new possibilities. So it’s more obvious in winter that the forced cheer of Christmas is our communal defence against the dark.
(*I was going to say it’s like a lighthouse, but actually you definitely don’t use the light of a lighthouse to steer directly towards.)
In Australia, laying the traditions of Christmas into the sunshine and heat of midsummer can lead to a sort of doubled vision; the ritual focus on cheer and communality drags the darkness out of the corners in an odd way - because of them we summon their opposite, and are reminded to miss people, to be melancholy, to feel scarcity in the season of abundance through the process of doing the rituals of abundance-in-the-face-of-scarcity.
Mum didn’t care much about Christmas, but it was always a family time, running from her birthday on the 28 Nov to our birthday on 7 Jan. so I miss her and think of her at this time of year. I had a friend who loved Christmas. I was always the not-bothered one, carried half reluctantly along by the tide of cheer. Last Christmas was his last Christmas. I think of him at this season and it makes me try a little harder to be Christmassy. Estranged family who I never miss, I miss the memory of them at Christmas, and the feeling that Christmas should be in the shape of them.
The joy of sharing Christmas with Laser Fraser is pretty great though, and I made a pavlova. Nothing fends off the chill specter of loneliness and mortality like a pavlova.
Xx
A
Comments
I started making pavlova for Christmas two years ago when I had a pile of egg whites left over from another dessert I was making...and it is now a thing. I have to make it or there will be a riot. Due to its popularity, I now have to make a third one as the first two were scarfed in their entirety and I had promised a piece to my lovely old neighbour. So yeah, pavlovas...
Love to you.
Thankyou so much for being here and supporting. Lots of what I can do can feel like shouting into the void, so having this Patreon community feels like - is in fact - this solid footing of knowledge and security that what I’m doing has an impact. I might have to write a post about it or something.
I’d love to be nominated for national treasure! Do I get to be in a cool glass box?
Tim Parsons
Another phrase that should be on a T-shirt - "nothing fends off the chill spectre of loneliness and mortality like a pavlova". Is it too soon to nominate you for the status of national treasure? Merry Christmas to you and yours too 🙂
Thank you so much for sharing these thoughts. I know holidays can be particularly emotional for others so while I try to get into the spirit as best as I can, I respect the fact others have reasons not to. Thanks so much for all the joy your work has brought the world. Merry Christmas.
Richard Bennett
By coincidence, we similarly have a Christmas season, that runs from Nov 27th (Dad's birthday) to Jan 6th (Mum's birthday). So practically the same time as yours (with Australia being so far ahead). It's not the same without Mum, but we still do our best. Thanks for being there Alice, and Merry Christmas to everyone :)
Gavin McKeown
We just had pavlova on Christmas Eve in Key West. Merry Christmas one and all
Merry Happy, Alice. Thank you for being you.
I can imagine the huge grin on her face when discovering pavlova for the first time.
