A Little Christmas Candour

Gap sweater
Gap pants
Jonak mules (similar)
Elizabeth Lyn Jewelry necklace (similar)
Delphine Pariente necklace (similar)
Madewell rings
Keltie Leanne Designs earrings (c/o)
Location: Osborne Village – Winnipeg, Manitoba

Just like that, we’re here again. Another year nearly near over, and Christmas less than a week away. This Christmas marks the end of our first full year in Winnipeg. It’s not a secret that the holidays aren’t my favourite time of year. After my tenth birthday, my interest in the annual festivities began to wane. And after four years of working in retail, listening to I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas (among other aggravating classics) on a seemingly endless loop for more than two months every holiday season, I would be quite content to live without every hearing a Christmas carol again.

We don’t decorate a tree. And while I love buying gifts, I loathe wrapping them. So much so that I have to make a bargain with myself every time I do wrap one, along the lines of, If you just wrap this one gift, then you can [insert any fun option here – my favourites are have a glass of wine and eat a chocolate bar.] My enthusiasm for turkey and stuffing is lukewarm at best. I welcome the time off work, but really, I could do without all the rest of it.

So I don’t put together gift guides. There was one year when I really made an effort to create Christmas content, but it was just that – a creation, not a reflection of my reality in any way. This year, I am sharing my Christmas with you exactly as it actually looks. We have a pile of gifts, wrapped in neutral-toned holiday paper, stacked in our dining room. I bought a pair of plaid cropped pants mainly because they feel like pyjamas and are therefore the closest I can get to actually wearing loungewear to all of my upcoming family gatherings. This is as Christmas-y as I get. It’s not even that I dislike the holiday – apart from the music, of course. I’m just indifferent. December is just another month for me and, with the miserable weather it brings, it’s not in my top three.

The older I grow, the more I begin to understand just how many of our preferences and quirks we blame ourselves for – as if the things that make us different are flaws in need of correction, rather than what distinguishes us as individuals. (I have a lot more thoughts on the subject of the false narratives we write for ourselves, so convincingly that we come to believe them as truth – but I’ll save them for the new year.) For a long time, I thought my lack of interest in the holidays (among other things) meant I was peculiar. I wasn’t wrong, necessarily. I am a little unusual. But I don’t want to fix myself anymore, because I don’t perceive the things that make me different as faults. That shift in perspective has proven, in a word, life-altering.

To the girl I used to be – I forgive you. But I no longer want to be you.

I’m glad to be the least conventional person in any given room these days. It took years of introspection and overanalysing and reanalysing to reach this point in what is still an ongoing journey. Self-acceptance, like good style, takes time. And I haven’t got it all figured out. Not nearly. But I know now that that’s totally okay. And I know that if, as I figure things out, they aren’t the way I expected them to be, I can find a way to accept and welcome that, too.

And so, my Christmas wish for all of you this year is that whatever feelings of self-doubt you’re hanging onto, whatever personal flaws you’re still silently criticising yourself for, you can let them go… or at least loosen your grip on them a little. May you all love yourselves just a little harder, and embrace the perhaps unusual but undoubtedly fabulous people you are, no matter what anyone (including the voice in your head) has to say about it.

Merry Christmas!