Holding Two Seasons at Once
For those holding multiple traditions, or none, or something complicated
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Tonight is Christmas Eve.
Three days ago was the Winter Solstice. The ancient marker. The longest night. The turning point that humans have honored for thousands of years, long before any of our current holidays existed.
Now, here we are, in the middle of a week that holds both.
Layered Time
For some of us, this week is simple. One tradition. One set of rituals. One way of marking sacred time.
For many of us, it’s more complicated than that.
Maybe you grew up with Christmas and have since found your way to earth-based practices. Maybe you celebrate with family out of love or obligation, while privately holding something different. Maybe you’ve left a tradition, and the holidays surface old grief alongside new freedom. Maybe you’re building something new and aren’t sure what it looks like yet.
Maybe you’re Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist or secular, navigating a culture saturated with Christmas while holding your own relationship to this season.
Maybe you’re simply tired, and the pressure to feel something specific, like joy, gratitude, or a holiday spirit, feels more demanding in a depleting year.
I don’t know your particular complexity, but I know complexity itself. The experience of standing in overlapping seasons, belonging fully to none of them, finding meaning in the spaces between.
The Space Between
I marked the solstice with silence and stillness. Attention to my body. Connection with practices older than any single tradition.
Tonight, I’ll be with family. There will be food and warmth and the familiar rhythms of Christmas Eve. I’ll hold both experiences, not as contradictions but as layers.
This is what it means to live in a time of transition. The old traditions don’t quite fit. The new ones aren’t fully formed. We improvise. We borrow. We create something that works for us now, knowing it may change.
The Earth doesn’t ask us to choose between Solstice and Christmas. It simply keeps turning, holding all our human rituals with the same patience it holds everything else.
Permission
If tonight feels complicated, you have permission to feel that way.
You can love your family and feel exhausted by the gathering. You can cherish traditions and grieve what they once meant. You can participate and also feel like an outsider. You can find genuine joy and carry genuine sorrow in the same hour.
The holidays don’t require us to be one thing.
If you marked the solstice and Christmas feels like a different language, that’s allowed. If Christmas is your deepest tradition and the Solstice means nothing to you, that’s allowed too. If you’re holding grief alongside celebration, absence alongside presence, questions alongside certainty, there’s room for all of it.
Sacred time has always been layered. The Christians built their celebration on earlier traditions. Those traditions were built on even earlier ones. We’re all holding multiple seasons at once, whether we recognize it or not.
A Simple Practice
Tonight, wherever you find yourself, try this:
Pause for a moment. One breath.
Name, silently, what you’re actually holding. Not what you’re supposed to feel. What’s actually present.
It might be joy. It might be grief. It might be exhaustion, gratitude, loneliness, love, ambivalence, peace. It might be all of these at once.
Let it be exactly that complicated. No need to resolve it or choose. Just acknowledge what’s true.
Then, if it helps, offer yourself one phrase: This too belongs to the season.
Whatever you’re holding tonight, it’s part of the turning. The light is returning. The year is ending. And you’re here, in the middle of it, carrying what you carry.
That’s enough. You’re allowed to be exactly this complicated.
What are you holding tonight? I’d love to hear, if you’re willing to share.
Walking with you through the layered season,
~ Jeffrey