The ripples of an uncomfortable party moment
In which I recall beginning a holiday journey of self understanding
Welcome back to another year of Finding Out! If you’re in UX or IA (or want to be), be sure to get to the bottom of the newsletter for a note about a wonderful national event that I’m planning to attend in April. And for all of you and yours, my wonderful readers, I am sending warm wishes for this year.
Gently, with concern in his eyes, my partner told me that his extended family was worried about me. We were at their cozy Christmas Eve party a few years ago. There was a table piled with food—veggies, cookies, smoked salmon, cheese, crackers, chocolate—all along the side of one room, and laughter and chatter hummed all over the house.
And yet, well, as I had been catching up with folks, I had been exuberantly telling them, “I hate Christmas!”
In retrospect, I can see that it may not have been the smoothest of moves.
On some podcast ages ago, I heard a legend about a family’s favorite pork roast recipe.
One day, as her mother slices an inch of roast off each end, a young woman asks, “Mom, why do you always throw away the ends of the roast?” Her mom shrugs and says, “That’s how my mom always made it.”
When the daughter goes and asks her grandma about it, we get a facepalm moment. Grandma says that there’s nothing wrong with the ends of the roast. When she was a young mother, she would cut off the ends because her oven and her pan were too small to hold the whole roast. Oh no, what!
The legend, of course, is about tradition, and so is this essay.
Traditions can be beautiful, community-sustaining parts of our lives. Traditions can also blindly repeat the difficulties and adaptations of our ancestors.
At that Christmas Eve party nearly a decade ago, I was going through an important moment of clarity. For the couple of years before that, I had struggled so much through the fall and winter holiday season, and yet I hadn’t really noticed the pattern consciously.
But something was different that year, and I had finally noticed the Groundhog Day nature of my winter holidays. I realized that I wasn’t just randomly having icky feelings around Christmas time each year. My emotions and the season were connected. And as the pattern became clear in my mind, so did the cognitive dissonance and some experiences from my childhood Christmases that had eventually built up into an intense discomfort with the season.
I was so relieved to figure it out that the realization just kept spilling out of me at the party.
That Christmas was the beginning of me taking a closer look at not just the winter holidays, but any holiday. Today, I continue to slowly explore and collect and pause and resume holiday traditions new and old.
At Thanksgiving, we make salmon instead of turkey, because it’s easier, more environmentally sustainable (I’m pretty sure), and it is one way that we honor and recognize the native stewards of our land who were so harmed by white folks coming to the Americas.
We’ve kept up winter holiday cards because the exchange with loved ones bring us joy, even though we do have moments of stress when we’re making them.
This past Monday, for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I once again read the section of “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” that speaks to our responsibilities as white people in this strange and struggling nation.
As for holidays in winter, for the last few years, we’ve celebrated Winter Solstice in our tiny family. We read a poem by Susan Cooper, and sit around a fire in our backyard in the evening. It’s a moment in the year that speaks to me so much because wow, do I long for the return of longer sunlight each winter.
And for Thanksgiving and Christmas, we participate in the extended family celebrations that bring us joy. This year, I personally chose to abstain from all the parties that invited us, while I sent my partner and kiddo with my blessing to join our family in New Jersey for Christmas. It was a hard decision to make, and it didn’t always feel good, but it did feel right.
Although I wasn’t tactful at that Christmas Eve party years ago, my words and my emotions were true. I was going through an important shift in my self awareness, and I am proud that I listened to myself. I’m going to continue to listen, and I am hopeful for the connection and joy that this self compassion will bring in my future and the future of my family.
So now I wonder, as we enter the New Year and the winter holidays fade away—how were they for you? Are you still riding the high of connection and excitement? Are you still feeling exhausted from the effort and being always on? Or perhaps you’re a mix of these emotions and more.
I hope you give yourself the gift of reflecting on this key time of our year. And when you do, consider that if we have a bigger pan, we’re free to cook the whole roast.
Mentioned in this issue: The legend of the family pot roast; Groundhog Day, a silly yet existential movie staring Billy Murray and Andie MacDowell; the care of adding Native recipes to your Thanksgiving; “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (the section I read starts with “I must make two honest confessions to you…”); and a winter solstice poem, “The Shortest Day” by Susan Cooper, which we read from this gorgeous picture book.
And, yes, about that national UX and IA event!
The IA Conference is my favorite yearly gathering of UX and IA people, and there’s just enough time for you to submit a poster to present this year!
Poster submissions are due January 31. The conference is in April. I have already submitted my poster idea, so if you do, too, we might get to be in the same session together.
If that’s not tempting enough, consider this: The poster I presented at my first IA Conference back in 2011 helped me make a connection that launched my career. Either way and whatever your hopes for the conference, I’d love to see you there!
Correction note: A previous version of this newsletter incorrectly said that IA Conference was in March this year. It’s in April!