Christmas is here.
That’s not an observation so much as a fact. The date arrives whether or not the day still fits. Whether or not the meaning holds. Whether or not the body or mind recognizes what it used to contain.
I notice the day more than I experience it.
The calendar insists. The world organizes itself around it. Stores close. Messages appear. Other people move through traditions that still have a shape. I can see the outline of what Christmas is supposed to be, even when I’m no longer inside it.
This isn’t sadness in the dramatic sense. It’s quieter than that. The absence of a familiar structure. The sense that something once held has loosened, and nothing has replaced it yet.
I don’t feel the need to explain why.
There’s a kind of pressure around days like this. An expectation that the day itself requires something. Feeling. Participation. Meaning. As if the calendar carries instructions along with the date.
I don’t experience it that way anymore.
What I notice instead is capacity. How much of the day I can hold. What parts of it ask too much. When being present turns into effort. When visibility becomes tiring. When retreat feels necessary, not dramatic.
I’m here. But I’m not performing the day.
There are moments I recognize. Familiar gestures. Familiar sounds. Familiar phrases. They don’t land the way they used to. That doesn’t mean they’re wrong. It just means my relationship to them has changed.
Sometimes that change feels sharp. Sometimes it barely registers. Mostly, it’s neutral. A quiet acknowledgment that this is a different version of the same date.
I don’t feel compelled to make the day meaningful. I don’t feel compelled to rescue it. I don’t feel compelled to find a lesson inside it.
Christmas doesn’t ask that of me.
It exists. I exist alongside it. That’s enough.
There’s a strange relief in not trying to force the day into a shape it no longer holds. In letting it be uneven. In letting it pass without commentary or resolution.
I’m not opting out. I’m orienting differently.
If there is anything this day requires, it’s honesty about capacity. About what can be held. About what can’t. About when quiet is not emptiness, but containment.
So today, I’m here in a limited way. In a softer way. In a way that doesn’t need to match anyone else’s expectations of what Christmas should look like.
The day will pass. The calendar will turn. Meaning may return in other forms, or it may not. That’s not something I can manage.
For now, this is what the day is.
And that’s enough.
