Holiday traditions nurture and tantalize us with delicious smells and foods, symbols and symbolic actions full of meaning, and the gathering of loved ones. This year they will be different. These are times of collective grief and loss around the earth. In the U.S., racism and our deep inequities and divisions are there for all to see. How can we adapt our rituals to help us this month?
As Dr. Imber-Black and I wrote in “Rituals for Our Times,” it can be difficult to come together and access spirit and joy in holidays when there has been profound upheaval. Before celebrating traditions important to you, you might first name and share whom and what has been lost.
Perhaps lighting candles in memory of people who have died, or visiting one of the many community memorials, or making homemade prayer flags, or a banner with blessings. For families with young children, puppets can act out sadness about all the changes we have had to make, and how to shift into other emotions. Doing things like these can clear space for other feelings.
This season can also be an opportunity to draw upon the strengths of rituals different from your own and to heal across communities. For example, use one or more of the Seven Principles of Kwanzaa (like Unity or Creativity) as a basis for present-making or a new ritual. A family or pod could give paper to each member and ask them to draw or write what Unity means to them. These can be folded, put into a bowl or hat (perhaps one with symbolic significance), mixed up, and pulled out and read by others. Everyone can guess who wrote what was read. Or a pod could draw a mural together of what Collective Work and Responsibility means for them.
Get-togethers are small. You can include others by making an arc of photos on the dining room table of previous holidays. One family wrote the names of those who usually gather on a wide ribbon, then drew their face or taped a photo of them next to their name. This ribbon now garlands their living room. A pod is sitting together to write notes to those who cannot be with them with their memories and appreciations of other times together. Do something on the birthday of UNICEF (Dec. 11) to make larger connections.
We are also in a year of reckoning around the climate crisis, and food insecurity. You could use fasting to focus on Muslim values of offering food to others, and donating to survival centers, farms and food banks.
Light is returning. You might want to visit the Sunwheel stones at UMass before the Solstice, or at 3:30 p.m. on Dec. 21. Different land trusts are offering social distanced hikes, or hike with the full moon on Dec. 29.
Perhaps check out holidays you know nothing about such as Icelandic Yuletide Lands celebrated on Dec. 14. Or integrate the Mexican posada tradition into your concerns about immigrants and refugees around the world. Investigate the Incwala Kingship Ceremony in Eswatini, which happens around Dec. 22 (summer solstice for them) for ritual inspiration or Ta Chiu, a Taoist festival of peace and renewal on Dec. 27.
On New Year’s eve you could incorporate the Spanish and Latinx tradition of las doces uvas de la suerte (the 12 grapes of luck), eating one grape at each stroke of the countdown to midnight. Or stuff old clothing with straw and make an Ano Viejo (old year) figure and burn or bury it. On New Year’s Day make a group list of your hopes for 2021. Be zany if you like. Maybe write yours in lipstick on your bathroom mirror.
However you celebrate, wishes to all for safe and healthy holidays. Save your 2020 stories and photos. This will be a season to remember and you’ll have humorous and wise things to share with generations to come. And don’t forget Chinese New Year’s on Feb. 12. Our tired and hungry spirits need things to anticipate and look forward to.
Dr. Janine Roberts, family therapist, Leverett resident and appreciative fan of how the Gazette and Bulletin connect us in so many ways. My daughter Natalya inspired this piece by what she did in her hometown in North Carolina where few Jewish people live. After checking with my granddaughter’s teacher, they filmed themselves reading “Clifford Celebrates Hanukkah” for Cadence’s class, and made small gift bags of dreidels and gelt for each classmate.