Dropping in here to share a word or 2 of holiday encouragement and consolation.
There are times when the runup to the holidays feels like a series of obstacles and challenges. Allow me to drop a couple of subversive ideas.
1) Whatever you did, it is enough.
2) People love getting treats in January, February, or even March. If you did not make the candied citrus peel covered with chocolate like Jaques Pepin showed you, it's fine! Maybe you knock it out wild card weekend. Or not. The things that have warmed my heart the most this year have been unexpected kind words from unexpected people.
3) They say the perfect is the enemy of the good, and as a corollary, the handcrafted is the enemy of the complete. I like poutine. Poutine involves 3 tricky ingredients -- fries, cheese curds, and gravy/poutine sauce. Thanks to Daniela Garza, I have unlocked the secret of fries at home. Cheese curds, esp good ones are hard to find, but luckily I know a guy. The sauce is tricky. Opinions vary widely on how to prepare, but if you wanted to do it full tilt, you would need to make and reduce a lot of beef stock. Beef stock is not any harder than chicken or pork stock, but the requisite bones are much harder to find. Or! You can grab a can of the sauce from one of Canada's leading poutine providers, and call it a day. That's what the Cinetrix and I did last night, and it rocked.
It is probably late to be sharing this advice, but ask yourself -- where can I cut corners to make this day/season a little bit more manageable? Use gift bags. Give promissory notes for future gifts of time.
4). You should go and listen to the whole episode, but on a recent Split Zone Duo subscribers' episode, my therapist Steven Godfrey gave advice about managing Xmas for someone who had gotten dumped on the previous Xmas day. The tl;dr would be to banish the words "always" and never from your vocabulary, and think about what would actually bring you joy, rather than going through the motions off prior rituals you did with ppl who are no longer in the mix.
*Or whatever else you celebrate.
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