2024: An Anti-Holiday Card

Years ago, a friend told me to leave him off the Christmas list. “I don’t need the rollup of Maggie’s accomplishments this year,” he joked. (We have the type of friendship in which this was a completely appropriate text btw) It was the first year of COVID and the world had been hard for a lot of folks in a lot of different ways. I reviewed the card and he was right – it was the high points – an incomplete picture at best.

Back in 2020, I referred to the holiday card as “borderline bullshit,” but I’m not sure that’s accurate. It’s a bit more nuanced that that. Every word of that card is true. The tone and feeling behind it – the joy and gratitude, also true. Because that’s the point of the holiday card. It’s there where we celebrate the wins, big and small, of our family. Where we share our light and the world always needs more light.

But the world also needs companionship in the dark. When we struggle, we need to know we aren’t alone. We need to know that we are not the only ones carrying such weight.

Shared triumph is doubled. Shared struggle is halved.  

Yes, that card is a true reflection of my year. It’s the story I’m focusing on these last few days of 2024. But, like any story, it doesn’t share everything.

It doesn’t show many times my children humbled me, and not in the teary light-filled way we post about on Instagram but in the rage-filled, shame-spiral way that left me crying and questioning everything I thought I knew about myself.

It didn’t mention the Mother’s Day I spent crying on the floor, feeling like a complete failure. Consumed by the fear of that failure.

Or the fights with J. The reasonable and unreasonable. The real and the manufacturer disagreements that come with three small boys and a teenager. That come with a home renovation and night shifts. That come with an endless string of moves and changes and transitions. I didn’t copy + paste any of that into the card.

It doesn’t capture how many times I lost my shit, screaming and shaking over a glass of spilled milk or dropped toothbrush.

My card mentions the degree I earned, but not that I had to ask for an extension for nearly every assignment the last semester. Or how I dropped out of another program (ok actually that one I’m proud of – know when to quit!)

Or the C (yeah, the C) I earned in another course. 

It doesn’t highlight the job I didn’t get because I simply “did not perform as well as my peers.” Or that I struggled in a professional career that I thought was going to be an easy fit.

It certainly doesn’t acknowledge the hangovers. Far fewer and much less intense than in my heyday, but still the occasional unnecessary foggy brain. One of many ways in which I deprioritized my physical health this year. There’s no picture of me inhaling McDonald’s French fries in my car, yet again, as I stress about another work email. Or stress filling the Amazon cart with more cheap shit that’s just going to stress me more. Then stressing about the betrayal of my ethics – knowing the overwhelming negative impacts of buying. All. Of. That. Shit.

Who wants that at Christmas?

It omits the struggles I’ve found in my professional career, the uncertainty I felt about big decisions, the questioning of my value and purpose. It doesn’t highlight the struggles of my transitions.

It focuses on the joy but not the flailing I feel so very often, like I’m trying to gather my family, hold them tight as I spiral, float, and tumbled unmoored. It doesn’t mention the desperate kicking, trying to find flat ground, holding an infinite breath in the middle of a whirlwind, grabbing for silver linings in storm clouds, and pulling up empty hands.

Eesh, that got dark.

What I’m saying is that this year was hard, in a lot of ways. And it was wonderful, in a lot of ways. The joy, the story in that obnoxiously designed, hand lettered, and wax sealed card has kept me buoyed this year. And the struggles – well they’ve served their purpose too. They’ve whispered, ok no, screamed in my ear about what needs to change. They’ve shone big harsh spotlights on what’s important and where I still need to grow.

And sharing them with the world makes them feel lighter. Hopefully it makes us all feel a little less alone in the dark.