Holy Christmas, It’s Been a Tough Year

’Tis the holiday season once more. Some folks adore this time of year, and those people are nuts.

Will the sparkly lights on display in neighbourhoods across town ease the pain of a health-care system in crisis or ameliorate the severe flu strain that threatens to take us all down?

Probably not.

Can Santa save us from conspiracy-addled relatives, the end of democracy and a little lite apocalypse?

Goddamn it, help us Santa!

With scary unknowns lingering from 2022, and the coming year already looking a bit cracker-jack, The Tyee is here to offer a leg up to those who need it. And let’s face it, we can all use a little help at the moment.

In previous years, Tyee tips for holiday survival have included a variety of coping mechanisms, everything from festive outfits to bath-time frolics. This year, an even wackier approach seems in order, because, well, it was a hell of a year, following a series of hellacious years.

As we stagger and stumble into the holiday break, we humans could use some time to put our feet up, slow down and reflect. Isn’t that what the holidays are for? Don’t fret for one second about making a batch of those viral New York Times gochujang cookies for the dinner party that you don’t want to attend anyway.

Here’s what to do instead, fellow humbugs. If you need a gentle pause from the everyday, a tiny bite of respite, I would suggest paws and claws.

A crabby Christmas and an otter New Year

If you’re tired of human ills, turn to other forms of consciousness. We share the planet with some of the weirdest and most wondrous creatures imaginable, and the holidays are a good time to reacquaint oneself with this furred and feathered abundance.

The Guardian has a dedicated section entitled Lost and Found filled with stories of plants and animals thought to be long extinct, who suddenly pop up to yodel hello, as if to say, “I’m not quite dead yet. Thanks very much!”

The resurrection of splendid beings like giant river otters, humongous bees and lavender-coloured land-dwelling crabs are things to behold. The world is full of endless, almost magical variety.

There is also a certain comforting pattern to these stories: the long vanishing, the accidental sighting, and then hola! The miraculous reappearance of a mysterious creature.

Every time a new story pops up about a long-lost beastie found again, a ginger ale joy fizzes through my veins. It is a simple pleasure, but there’s nothing wrong with that.

Another subset of this idea is things that are genuinely dead and long buried. The ongoing discovery of new dinosaur fossils thrills me to core. Check it out: they go from big, to bigger, to BIGGEST!! They just keep getting more massive and each giant bone swells my heart.

If you’re at the end of your holiday rope and about to strangle a relative with it, looking at extraordinary organisms staging a comeback or long-gone behemoths rediscovered can offer a repository of happiness and hope.

Take a lesson from the purple land crab: you will get through this, lavender pincers and all.

Scream it out

In the 1970s, when hippy parents, back-to-the-landers and new age wankers decided that key parties and rebirthing sessions weren’t quite doing it, the notion of primal scream therapy raised its rather loud head. A group of dissatisfied humans got together and howled, shrieked and wailed, assailing the heavens with all the cacophony they could manage.

The idea has recently been resurrected, primarily by middle-aged women. Obviously, there’s a lot to scream about.

Public scream-fests are a time-honoured tradition. We’ve even seen them in films and Grimes’ wellness routine.

If screaming is good enough for the former partner of Elon Musk who probably knows a few things about wanting to shriek at the heavens, it’s good enough for you.

Finding a secluded place where no one will call the cops on you is the tricky part. In other cities, screamatoriums have sprung up.

Shrieking into a pillow or the back of the couch is always an option, but if you live close enough to the woods or a deserted bit of beach, head outside and vent your spleen to the indifferent waves and the accommodating trees. Be one with howling nature.

Hark, the clapping of the tremulous hands!

A recipe for epic frolics came from the Greek satirist Lucian of Samosata. Of the holiday spirit, old Lucian reportedly said it was a period of “Drinking and being drunk, noise and games and dice, appointing of kings and feasting of slaves, singing naked, clapping of tremulous hands, an occasional ducking of corked faces in icy water.”

Now, that’s a list I can get behind.

The easiest solution to surviving extended periods of holiday stress isn’t meditation or mindfulness. It’s being entirely off your nut. Food and drink have always figured large in any holiday celebration, so take it to the max and restage Romanesque orgies of food, feasting and other species of debauchery.

Invite over the giant river otter and the purple land crab and go full howling cuckoo banana pants! When you wake up in mid-January wearing only a bathmat and a motorcycle helmet, don’t try to even try to recall the events of the last few weeks.

Like a camel in the desert, let your mind wander

In this media-saturated age, having one’s brain entirely unoccupied even for a fraction of a moment has become a rare occurrence.

Good things can come out of extended periods of letting your mind wander like a camel in the desert. You might just stumble into an oasis of new ideas. There are repositories of curious stuff in there, buried under the detritus of the daily news cycle.

Allow boredom to open up your mind and let all the weirdness out. You might start with mundane stuff, like pondering who in the cast of WKRP in Cincinnati is still alive. But you can end up somewhere you never expected, like inventing a new form of public transport or a noodle dish. Or a combination of the two. Jet pack noodles are just the beginning.

Lie down

The natural outcome result of excessive excess is a period of stasis. A slump, sure, but not just any random lassitude. Lean into this one purposefully, by which I mean slide forwards until you’re actually lying flat on the ground, and then simply refuse to get up. Make people step over you if they want to do anything holiday-ish. Passive resistance, you mean? Yes, now you’re getting it. The more passive, the more resistant.

If anyone insists that you’re being childish and wrecking the festivities for everyone, start making loud farty noises, until your accusers throw their hands in the air and stomp off. Huzzah, you’ve won!

Self-care is a term that is frequently bandied about, but it’s a bit of a Band-Aid solution, me thinks. The notion that taking a rest is a radical act, that might connect (eventually) to the larger idea of liberation hasn’t happened yet. Mostly we rest just enough to keep on plugging. But what does a more substantive break look like?

Occasionally, I cast my mind back to the moment of potential shift that hovered like a mirage in the desert, when there was a collective intake of breath and a tiny bit of “what if?”

Maybe the time has come to resurrect that question in a more substantial way.

Wonder powers activate!

I don’t think everyone should take up jogging around the park. Physical activity is all fine and good, but I’m talking about taking big action to shift the cadence of your life.

If ever there was a moment in human history to upset the apple cart, it’s now. All the smart folk in the world, from Gabor Maté to George Monbiot are calling for a radical rethink of the way we live. Why is this a good and necessary thing? A list of reasons could circumnavigate the globe, wrapping around at least a couple of times.

The usual reasons still apply. Saving the planet, yadda yadda, but for me, and maybe a few of you, as well, I’m just tired of people behaving badly, short-sightedly, with little thought to the coming generations of not only other humans, but generations of everything: bees to whales, trees to snails.

As a few folks have pointed out, the current crop of billionaires could solve world hunger and still have oodles of money left over. If you could do something that important, why wouldn’t you?

It’s not hard to find examples of people creating horror shows at the moment. There’s a bevy of stuff to pick from. It’s harder to find things that are going well, but perhaps the tide is turning. The notion that justice might finally prevail for the architects of the Jan. 6 insurrection in the U.S. gladdens the heart. And there are plenty of other examples, from ending student debt to safeguarding biodiversity.

The change in the season lends itself naturally to sloughing off old things and the birth of something new. It’s high time to think big. Epic newness, if you will.

As 2022 slinks away, tattered and torn, 2023 lurches into view, brimming with possibilities. Who knows what the coming year will hold. It might even bring us a new species of purple land crab, riding a jet pack, eating noodles, changing the world. Now you’re getting the picture.

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Happy holidays, readers. Our comment threads will be closed from Friday, Dec. 23 until Tuesday, Jan. 3 to give our moderators a well-deserved break. See you in 2023!