It's a table for one, again this Christmas. But I am of good cheer.
It's a table for one this Christmas, for me. I know my single-place setting all too well after four years of this. Yet even in solitude, I follow the customs of Christmas taught to me in sunnier times. There will be food, drink and music for the occasion.
"Be of good cheer," I tell myself. But my words of encouragement have become like the Xmas decorations on my tree- a little worse for wear after these solitary yuletide years. At the moment, I am overcome with a going-through-the-motions feeling to everything I do. A despondency crept up on me this year and now skulks on the backstairs of my personality. It's a weariness at the normality of living in dark times as if it was always so.
Politics got the best of me this year. I can't shake this sense that everything is going to get far worse and not better in my lifetime. Everything that makes life decent for the ordinary person is in crisis. Affordable housing has been eliminated. Our climate is bleeding out because the entitled unfettered capitalism from civilisation's right to evolve into a more perfect union between nature and progress. The cost of living crisis makes eating properly an activity exclusive to the well paid. Public healthcare was deliberately destroyed during the Covid pandemic and now waits to be picked apart by hedge funds the way road kill is feasted upon by crows. I no longer believe democracy is functioning for anyone but the rich. I no longer trust that the most well off in our society will fix these issues.
We have had too much war this year and too much anguish. So much of the death made over these last 365 days was created not because ordinary people are violent or greedy but because the 1% is. I have an overwhelming feeling that the war in Gaza, like the war in Ukraine or Sudan, is a prelude to our own Götterdämmerung.
My festive exile is a choice made for me by reasons of health more than poverty, although being piss poor does influence what I do. I have invitations to attend Christmas dinners but won't go.
COVID isn't over for people, like me who because of comorbidities have a target painted on their back by a virus that attacks all manner of human organs. I can't risk getting seriously ill or mildly ill in a society that has no social safety nets to catch me should I be unable to care for myself. I've already done that rodeo when I was diagnosed with rectal cancer in 2020 at the exact moment COVID hit our world with the ferocity of a Category 5 hurricane making landfall.
When my dad died in November 2018, I was gutted over that Christmas season and spent Christmas day delivering food parcels for those who were less fortunate than me. I wanted to be out of the house and bury my grief in work. Still, there was a deadness in my heart, and I felt sad and separated from other living beings. I remember that after I had finished my Tukey dinner deliveries, I went home to an empty apartment and drank a glass of wine. I felt purposeless and unconnected to life because my dad's death was still very fresh in my heart. I even wrote a letter to myself permitting me to end my life in a year should my despair continue.
A year after I wrote that letter, I laughed about it because I knew although it hadn't been formally diagnosed- I had cancer. I realised that life was going to do what it wanted with me. So I may as well hang on until the ride was over to see if it was all worth it. In the interim, cancer and I have called it a draw for now because a progressive lung disease is fighting it out to be the one to assassinate me. Hopefully, it will take its sweet time to finish the job.
I'm in this life until my last breath. Until then, I will be both of good cheer and resolve that I am on this earth to find moments of happiness, but also fight for a new democracy- which is for the many rather than the few.
There is no mandatory rule that statutory holidays will be a happy occasion for you or me. Happiness has its own timetable and can appear in times of peace, war and even plague when the circumstances are right.
Happiness is the most fragile of feelings that even an unkind whisper can shatter it. But like spring it always comes back.
So, if it is your thing, Happy Christmas and if it isn’t, Happy Holidays. I have a feeling if it is only for a minute good cheer will find us during these yuletide days and remind us that life is still sweetest ride around.
Go Well, everyone and thank you because you have shown me much comradeship during my journey. John
Thank you for reading my subtack and the chapter selection above from Harry Leslie Smith’s Love Among the Ruins. Your help is needed because the cost of living crisis has become a merciless grind. During these past 24 months, I am looking for 20 more paid subscribers this month to ease the path ahead b/c it’s rough.
I have posted 245 essays, as well as excerpts from the unpublished works of Harry Leslie Smith - along with chapter samples from my book about him. My newsletter has grown from a handful of subscribers to 1200 in that period. Around 10% of you are paid members. I appreciate all of you but ask if you can switch to a paid subscription because your help is NEEDED to keep me housed and Harry Leslie Smith's legacy relevant. But if you can't all is good too because we are sharing the same boat. Take care, John. Happy Christmas, Happy Holidays.
Merry Christmas! I find your posts about your parents and family deeply moving. I have been dealing with my father’s illness the last few months and learning more about my grandfather’s and family’s experiences during the Nazi occupation and war. It is amazing how much the past is still within us. I too despair about a future that appears increasingly bleak. My deepest wishes for better health next year and for more joyful, creative and productive moments. Please know that your work makes a difference.
I am with you in spirit - your Dad was an inspiration and I can see why his loss hit you so hard. If it helps at all... you are not alone. Many of us are feeling the anxiety about the future that you express here.