For a long time, my Mum and I have wanted to start a website where we blog about all things Christmas. I’m excited about this, I think about it all the time, but to be honest, I’m also very nervous about it. My obsession with Christmas, with holidays in general really, is intrinsically tied to my mental health and the state of the world. Maybe some would see my fixation on Christmas as unhealthy, It is after all, unquestionably a coping mechanism for dealing with the stress and anxiety of day to day life in 2018. Everything is terrible, but luckily Christmas is one of the few things that still brings me joy! Christmas comes no matter what, even when I’m broke, even when I’m drowning in work, even when I had a dissertation to write, even if the Grinch steals it. Christmas comes either way. Christmas comes, it lets you take a break from work (however short), it lets you spend time with people you love, it lets you revel in a sort of cozy comfort that no other time offers. When I feel like there is nothing to look forward to, when the future feels bleak, Christmas is what I look forward to, even in January.

Fear

This may seem obvious, but the worse the world gets, the more I need Christmas. I’m a very political person and so is my partner and my family. We talk about politics A LOT. I spend most of my time thinking and talking about writing and being concerned about political things. As an academic, a lot of my research focuses on the unsavoury parts of the internet and how they have infested (and then become) the political landscape. I spend a lot of time reading and researching far-right political movements about misinformation and apathy. I spend a lot of time reading about hatred and discrimination. I spend a lot of time reading the comments that no one wants to read to make sure that I understand just how bad things are. As you can imagine, one can not live off of reading the comments alone.

The worst things get the more time I spend obsessively reading the news, but also the more time I spend thinking about how to pinch my pennies to find the perfect present, the perfect food to prepare for my annual party, the perfect Christmas getaway, the perfect winter outfit. On a bad day, I can be completely miserable and thinking about the inevitable heat death of the universe, or how I’m going to die with my student loans, or how it feels like we are on the brink of world war three, but then I think about Christmas and I can feel hope and excitement for the future. Looking forward to Christmas lets me feel something other than dread for the future. I’m positive I can’t be the only person who feels this way.

Mantra

I’ve heard people talk about how mediation works on a psychological level, It’s a bit like Pavlov’s dog. You come up with a mantra or a sound or a speech and then you recite it and try to feel relaxed. Eventually, because you’ve relaxed to this sound or mantra so many times, even if you are wound up tight as all hell, you hear your mantra and *ding* your body relaxes automatically because it has been trained to relax. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve done that with myself and Christmas. I hear sleigh bells and I salivate for the season. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, when I really need it, in the heat of summer, I will plug in the Christmas lights or light a Christmas candle and I will feel calm. When I was editing my PhD dissertation this summer and I was completely run down, I had shingles (yes at 30, they said they wouldn’t give me the vaccine for another 35 years) and I felt like I couldn’t go on. But then I would put on some Hallmark Christmas movie fluff in the corner of my screen and feel at peace while I edited my bibliography for the 500th time. The cold makes me feel safe, the snow makes me feel sound.

Guilty Pleasures

I realized on one particularly hard workday, a day where I had taken a long lunch to make a soup from scratch and then take elaborate Instagram photos of said soup, that I was doing this on a hard day because it is was what brought me pleasure. But, I also felt totally guilty about it. Homemade soup and elaborately styled food photos may have brought me joy, but I was keenly aware of the fact that people would look at said photos as a cry for attention, as a big waste of time, as a distraction, as frivolous. Food photos won’t save the world after all. At that moment it hit me. There were so many things I did for pleasure, and I shared them online very selectively because I don’t want to be judged. I was afraid to say how I really felt because all my pleasures had become guilty pleasures. It was so hard to come up with a single thing I did for pleasure on a day to day basis that I didn’t feel guilty or shameful about. Fashion, makeup, food, photography, watching vlogs, home decor, holidays, cooking, shopping, these were the things that brought me pleasure in my day to day life but I rarely talked about them. I was embarrassed. I realize, of course, that all these activities are feminized in a way that some other activities I enjoy are not. I don’t feel the same shame when talking about my love for horror movies or video games. For some reason (*cough* misogyny *cough*) these things aren’t looked upon with the same disdain. I decided while eating that (absolutely delicious btw) soup that I needed to take the guilt out of all my guilty pleasures and my biggest guilty pleasure of all is Christmas.

When doing my normal work on any given normal workday I would often stop and think about how much I wished I could blog some recipe I had concocted, or make a video about the new makeup that I was experimenting with, or document a room makeover in a way more public than Instagram, but then I wouldn’t do these things because it seemed so frivolous. I would never judge someone for posting this sort of content but every time I posted it myself I worried people would judge me. But then I thought: if these things bring me such immense pleasure (and allow me to do my other harder work) is it really frivolous? Right now I’m living an unbalanced life. I spend all day reading and writing and researching about things that are largely depressing and I’m totally glued to the news at all times. I wouldn’t give that up for anything. I’m not trying to “focus completely on the positives” because I’m pretty sure if we all do that the world will collapse. But, I need some balance in my life so that I can feel pleasure without also feeling guilt. I need the Hallmark fluff movie that allows me to edit the hard stuff. 

Calm

I guess what I’m trying to say here, is that I am not a calm person but something about Christmas makes me calm and whatever that is I need to hold onto it. My job, my research, are important but are also extremely depressing and hard. I often run the gamut of emotions in a workday: fear, sadness, desperation, exhilaration, anger, vengeance, depression, anxiety, confusion, discovery. But joy isn’t one of those emotions. There is no joy in the work I do. My work is uncomfortable and while I want to be a writer who writes about uncomfortable things I also need comfort. I want to write about the things, to share the things, that bring me joy in these dark times. I need something that equals that difficulty of my day in frivolousness, in easiness. I need fluff, I need snow, I need mint, and gingerbread, and magic. I need a way to be creative that brings myself and others comfort and joy in the same way my research brings discomfort and hard truths.

Comfort

My mum and I have been talking about this project, about lifestyle blogging, for years. Between the two of us, we consume an enormous amount of lifestyle content online on blogs, on Youtube, on Instagram, on Pinterest. We consume content about all of our interests which are massively varied, everything from crocheting, and beauty to literature and vegan food. For a long time, we have been discussing creating the type of content we consume. In that time we have been planning this website, that talks about Christmas’ country comforts and big city joy.

But, we haven’t launched before now in part because I’ve been finishing my PhD, but also in part because I think I’ve been afraid to devote myself fully to this project because I was worried what people would think. I’m a critical person and while I never consume uncritically, I do consume none-the-less. I think some types of consumption are considered acceptable for politically minded people and others aren’t. Some people got mad at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for talking about makeup, and I wonder if they might judge me for doing the same. But women can care about the important things, about the state of the world, and also care about brands of lipstick. I know this for a fact. But I can’t shake the idea that people will respect me less because if I really cared about my politics and my academic research, then I wouldn’t also care about things like fashion and home decor. So much of progressive politics is about making yourself uncomfortable, examining your privileges and what makes you uncomfortable and I am all for that. I’m good at discomfort. But, I’m not good at comfort. I’m bad at taking care of myself, at being nice to myself, at giving myself a break. I’m hoping this website gives me a space to be nice to myself, I’m hoping it encourages me to create comfort in my day to day life in a way I maybe wouldn’t otherwise. 

Christmas

Writing about Christmas specifically brings this anxiety about that judgement to a whole other level. Maybe it’s because Christmas is so explicitly tied to the history of capitalism in our thoughts in a way that other things, movies, for example, are tied to capitalism, but in a way that we aren’t as conscious of on a societal level? Or that we don’t bring up every time we see a movie? (I mean I bring it up every time I see a movie those commercials before the trailers in theatres are my own personal hell) We often take for granted how every single aspect of our lives is caught up in capitalism, but no one ever forgets that ties between capitalism and Christmas. Or is it that most people do forget and it’s the type of people I am around that are more discerning about it? I don’t know, but what I do know is that I’ve written about some extremely controversial topics but I never feared judgement for writing about them as much as I do right now. I guess it’s because I’m fearing the judgement of those I respect.

But also, I think that Christmas is a thing people get very angry about and I fear that anger because I don’t understand it. Is it joke anger or is it real anger when people lose it about stores putting up Christmas decorations too early? I guess what I’m asking is why people who dislike Christmas care about Christmas so much? I’m a very angry person and I’m angry about 100 things at all times. Currently, I’m obsessing with anger over a white supremacist getting third in Toronto’s mayoral race. I’m angry about inequality and discrimination and violence. There is so much in the world to be angry about I can’t imagine being angry about people enjoying things, be that tinsel, or Star Wars, or selfies, or food photos, or pop music, or reality TV. I live in a household where we talk critically about capitalism every day of the year, not just on Christmas and Valentines Day. I think that’s a whole other essay to explore, but these are just some of the things I’m thinking about in relation to politics and Christmas as I undertake this blog, which is in theory, my non-political project hahahahahhaha. 

I hope that as we start this project, that thoughtfulness, that self-reflection, that criticality that we have to offer is something that makes us stand out from other lifestyle bloggers. I tend to feel alienated from anyone who writes about things in an explicitly unpolitical way it creates anxiety in me that they are hiding something unsavoury. I want to experience the pleasure of thinking about things other than politics, but I don’t want to pretend that everything is completely holly jolly either you know?

Joy

So that brings us here. To myself and my mother starting blogging about the holidays in earnest. My mom has been doing this sort of blogging for a long time, and I’ve been doing a lot of professional writing of other sorts. Blogging, and even vlogging, are falling out of fashion but we are still in love with them. We still consume this type of content every single day so it only makes sense that we also start creating it. I am so excited for this Christmas, and I already have a ton of things to blog about. Please tune in tomorrow for my Mum Nancy’s introductory post and please like our page on Facebook, and follow us on Instagram, and Pinterest! 

I’ve always loved documenting my life on social media and I’m excited to extend that documentation to Comfort and Joy. Please check out our existing posts (fall decor! Halloween crafts! Halloween parties! Christmas Decor!) and stay tuned for recipes, posts about home decor, about fashion, about travel, about makeup about life in Canada, about comfort and joy.

– Love, Emma ❤