December 12, 2025

i dislike december. i dislike getting up early to shovel snow and scrape off my car windshield before going to work. i get annoyed strapping on my cramp-ons to trudge to work. i dislike happy families and santa photos and the pretty girls in their christmas sweaters planning hallmark holiday movie marathons with mistletoe manhattans and peppermint mochas.

i am resentful that a holiday that should be one of cheer, is one forever associated with my father’s death. two years ago, he died just a few days before christmas. i did not realize that 2022 would be my last christmas with him. this year will be the third christmas without him and i dont understand because like, he was just here.

he was just in the living room laughing over national lampoons christmas vacation. he was just in the kitchen sneaking after eights and toblerone even though he had diabetes and probably shouldn’t have.

on the way home from the hospital, where my dad died, i saw christmas lights and santa hats and candy canes and it seemed so ghoulish and uncanny – this reminder that while the world ended for me in that hospital room, it just kept right on turning outside. i felt sea sick.

my tiny ukrainian mother and i drank coffee and watched the sun come up in silence.

we ate mcmuffins.

she went home to make phone calls and i sat in my house staring at my yule goat christmas stocking and tiny skinny christmas tree until i couldnt see straight and i was overcome with this violent urge to just rip it all down. those decorations were repulsive to me on that morning.

last year, i put the tree up in a haze. i grumpily purchased a few second hand christmas tree decorations at the thrift store. i cried when one of my yule goats began losing his red ribbon. i was a dark cloud hovering just above the joy of the other people in my life.

this year, i felt the dread creep in right around the end of november. her death anniversary comes first. december 4th. nine years this year.

then two years without my father december 18th. three years without my uncle december 23rd. two years without my other uncle december 30th.

then january coming and not looking much better. my family acknowledged three aquarian birthdays. my maternal grandfather january 28th, mine the 29th and my father’s the 30th. it’s just me now.

my close friend died the 31st. drugs, of course. slipping away in the night.

this wintery liminal space of death and gingerbread houses.

i vow to not be an asshole this year and make my grief everyone else’s fucking problem, but those are easy words to say with much more difficult follow through.

i put off putting up the tree.

and then one night with a burst of energy i drag it out from under the stairs and up it goes and it stands there staring at me. i find some vintage angel ornaments at the thrift store and hang those first. there’s twelve angels and each of the angels gets a dead persons name and i cry myself to sleep that night and dream about angels and cedar.

i find a pair of homemade angel wings in the overflowing section of Christmas garbage at a thrift store. they light up and cost $3 and i buy them and bring them home and i put up christmas decorations dressed in white like a cult leader or yoga teacher. the wings light up and i burn a cinnamon candle and sing “god rest ye merry gentlemen”.

i hang a shitty wreath on my door and put the tree skirt on the skinny tree that i got at canadian tire.

i hang up my yule goat christmas stocking.

the house smells like mint and cinnamon and mandarin oranges and chocolate and i could swear i hear my father in the kitchen looking for cookies. but it isn’t him.

at least i put the tree up.