This year the holidays are just different. My obnoxious seasonal jubilation seems to be boxed away in our storage unit with just about everything else we own. The kids are suffering having been displaced, promised a visit to go “home” to visit for the holidays that couldn’t happen, and all of the physical markers and rhythms of this holiday season for our family stripped away.

I know I am not alone in this apocolyptic shit show of a year.

I know that even without having been ruthlessly torn from our family home of 9 years in the middle of a federal no eviction period, things still would have been hard. And despite my harsh vernacular to describe these times I have yet to lose the last kernel of hope.

Instead I have to ask myself: What can be done? What do we celebrate with? What do we celebrate for?

So what can be done? Plenty. We have made snowflakes and window stars to decorate the windows. We can’t afford gifts this year or to mail them all over the country, but we can make gifts and send cards. We can recreate the traditions of past with less pomp and glory but with all of the same reverence and intention, and thankfully a 3, 4 and 6 year old don’t seem to notice the difference. We can bake, and take drives to look at lights (something that wasn’t really a thing in our old state). We can read stories or make them up. We can facetime rather than gather in the same space. We can take walks outside to note the changes of the season.

What do we celebrate with? I wrestled through storage to find the essentials to help decorate the house. Sure I did not find it all, because who can in a 30X15 foot space with boxes and totes stacked higher than their head with furniture precariously balanced on top. Plus I requested a few gifts from family to be sent to us early so they could be used in a celebratory way leading up to the holiday season. We celebrate with what we find, we make the mundane revenant. We can pilfer our greens off the side of the road by owners who have cut down trees and left them for the state to pick up. We can use apples to hold candles. We can sing to a fake tree at the family members house we are living with rather than to one lit with small beeswax candles cut down in the woods behind the family home.

What do we celebrate for? We celebrate for each other. We celebrate to remember we are more than the jobs we work and the things we buy. We celebrate to remember the things beyond the physical world. We celebrate to cultivate reverence and wonder. To instill these qualities in our children, to find our own inner child and celebrate it.

So here is the call. How are you gonna make the most of this holiday season? What is it that will nurture your needs and your families needs. What new stellar traditions can you start? Leave a comment and let me know how you are rockstar handleiding what the universe is throwing at you this year.