Chapter 10: Why We Need a Little Christmas Now
For some reason this year I’ve had the song “We Need a Little Christmas” on repeat in my head. It’s not because it’s my favorite holiday tune. Nor is it due to sentimentality toward the song’s origin in the musical Mame, whose title character remains an inspiration to my approach to life.
But I keep getting the sense that, collectively, right now, we all need a little Christmas -- or the joyous holiday of choice. You know the one. That holiday that brings you to a happy place, where kindness may appear and most of all, we feel a closer connection to those in our chosen and given families. That’s the one that we need.
The song appears in a scene that takes place just after Thanksgiving in 1929. The Depression has made life look bleak for the once wealthy, carefree and eternal optimist Auntie Mame and her nephew/ward Patrick.
Angela Lansbury (l) and the cast of Mame perform “We Need a Little Christmas” on Broadway in the 1960s.
Haul out the holly
Put up the tree before my spirit falls again.
While we aren’t in the middle of an economic Depression, there’s been constant uncertainty in our lives on existential and practical levels.
I’ve relied on the 15 participants in Ignite 360’s Navigating to a New Normal study to help me make sense of what’s going on in the world as well as the mood of the nation and the shifts in our behavior and values.
This fall we had another round of interviews. We always ask about what current events they are following and how it’s impacting them.
Jennifer in NY, 44 described all the events as “overload.” She thinks of many of these as black swan events and told me “I can't handle anymore. It's been too many things. Too many things back to back. And now it's like another war (in Gaza), like really? What is happening in the world? It's just like things that you would never (imagine). I guess, that region, there's usually some kind of conflict there, but it's just a lot.”
How we absorb information and learn about facts has shattered into hundreds of millions of pieces thanks to social media and the internet. Truth, which is always elusive, and even facts are harder than ever to pin down. We have moved into “bespoke realities” as Renee DiResta of Stanford has identified. Each one of us now believing with varying degrees of certainty that our reality is the one truth when really it’s curated specifically for us by algorithms and the bubbles of where we live and who we hang out with. It has turned us all into snowflakes.
Photo by Thom_Morris via iStock
Fill up the stocking.
I may be rushing things but, deck the halls again now
The cruelty and hate that is now emanating from humanity during this era is adding to the heaviness on people’s minds. The murder of a young Palestinian boy outside of Chicago had disturbed Jenika, early 30s and a mom of 3 in South Carolina. “I do think there's a complete mindset change of a before and after. I don't think that we even understand the butterfly effect of what has happened because of that in our minds, in our thinking, in our, you know, how things are,” she said, referring to the after effect of the pandemic.
It's getting hard to limit a count to one hand all the black swan, never in our lifetime, type of things we’re seeing. Covid, George Floyd’s murder, Election Denial, January 6, Ukraine, Uvalde, Dobbs, October 7/Gaza and it’s all happening rapid fire before we can come to terms with the last event. We can’t unsee these things and they rest in our psyche. Mental health professionals report they are seeing higher levels of anxiety in patients, often related to events that are largely beyond their control.
Barb, a retired pastor in her late 60s living in Texas shared her feelings with the constant state of war going on. “It affects me in that there's kind of this underlying, not fear because I don't I don't see the violence coming here so much, but just a sense that the world is still a painful place. You sort of get lulled into thinking, maybe before the Ukraine thing started, yeah, we were on a road where there'd be more peace and we would be you know, onward and upward and things would be good. And all of a sudden it feels like well yeah, we're still human beings and we still fight and so there's this underlying negative, I guess.”
She continued, “and then you know as I've been often I suppose a little frustration with my fellow citizens who don't want to understand, don't want to learn, they don't want to engage with these things. And I'm not sure that's true of everyone but I think it's certainly true of a lot of people and they want a simple answer. They want Ukraine to be over. We did that already. We gave them some money now it should be over. Well, it isn't.”
“So I get frustrated with my fellow citizens who who are kind of caught up in their own lives. And maybe I feel just impotent myself, you know, there's a part of me that says well, what are you doing? Well, other than complaining to Tori, nothing.”
Watch more from Jen, Jenika and Barb…
Yes, we need a little Christmas, right this very minute.
Hasn’t snowed a single flurry, but Santa dear we’re in a hurry.
As Auntie Mame and her family celebrate an early Christmas, the characters in her employ present her with the receipts from the butcher’s bill which they paid for her using their rainy-day savings.
What we do usually have some control over, our own spending, remains vexing as inflation comes down while prices remain high. Jill, a mom of 3 in Michigan shares “I feel like things are still so expensive. We're still trying to be creative about ways to cut things without cutting things, if that makes sense. Because I don't want the kids to feel it. We're trying to be a little bit more strategic.”
The pundits and politicians may be cheering that inflation has lowered but people still have to make ends meet.
Brittannie an early 30s single working mom of 3 in the Kansas City area shared her frustration. “Me and my best friend were talking and it's like, how do I make the most money that I've ever made now but I'm broker than I've ever been. Like that doesn't make it. We've always lived the same lifestyle. So nothing else has literally changed. Nothing. We make more money and we do (buy) the same amount. So, I don't know. It's really scary, bro. Like if I think about it too long, I'm just like, all right, keep on hustling.”
It's not just grocery prices that are high, as Kelvin, a married father in the Boston area shared. “The one thing I have noticed going out, right, it used to be the three of us will go out. As you know, we're kind of foodies, so it's not like we're skipping or anything like that. $200, you know, for the three of us, we get a decent meal. What I'm finding now is like, that's a $300 meal now. I was floored, 300, like $300. That used to be a birthday dinner, going to the new hot popular restaurant in town, or a high end tasting meal and stuff like that.”
And there’s little trust that the prices are going to come down anytime soon as Brad, a married gay man in his mid-40s living in New York shared. “I mean, inflation's come down. The prices have not gone down yet. So, I mean, I don't think they're gonna come down. I think that they're just gonna stop increasing at such a velocity that they were before.”
For I’ve grown a little leaner, grown a little colder
Grown a little sadder, grown a little older.
In between global events and grocery store prices sits domestic events and an upcoming Presidential election that has people concerned.
“It's weird, because I grew up Democrat,” observed Dajon, late 20s in the Phoenix area. “And then, as I transitioned and started working for myself and started having to pay my own taxes and stuff like that, I started to realize like I I feel a lot more conservative than I am Democrat. I'm not into sharing resources with the entire world, because our entire nation right now is in shambles and I don't see any other nations reaching out to us and offering us some handouts. I'm like, get back to the basics, let's fix what we have wrong now and then start worrying about other people's problems. Honestly, we are in a massive pithole of drama amongst ourselves. We can't fix our military, we can't fix our credit, we can't even come to common ground with any of our own people at this point. We're just massively confused.”
The concern about our inability to overcome differences of opinion ranked 4th in a list of 24 issues people are worried about according to a quant phase of this study fielded in fall 2022. That was ahead of every societal issue and behind only the personal pocketbook concerns.
Currently traveling in Europe, Kelsey, early 30s who recently finished her MBA, also wants to tackle issues at home. She grew up in Maine not far from Lewiston, a recent site of a mass shooting. “We do need to focus on the important things, and they're not stopping people fleeing violence because they're being murdered in their countries. I think the important things are probably taking care of people. You forget that other people have different perspectives out there and their own bubbles too. I mean, we're watching the way the election is being set up right now. Like that, what we're heading towards. I don't necessarily have much hope. And I don't think we're doing ourselves any favors by anything that's happening. We have it so much better than so many other places. But it's just mess. Things are a mess. And we're not going to do the right thing with guns. And I already know that. Like when people ask me, they're like, could this (shooting in Lewiston) change things? I'm like, no, no, that can't. If a school of elementary schoolers can get murdered and we don't do anything, why is this going to change things? These were adults. If we don't do something for five-year-olds, why would we do anything for adults?”
Brad in New York has been very politically aware and observant in every conversation since the study began. “The next year's election scares the hell out of me, I have to be honest, because those polls just came out, CNN and NBC, I believe, where Trump is winning in like five swing states. And that scares the hell out of me. And we're trying to get a plan B ready.”
While people have considered leaving the country because of the draft, I don’t recall an election outside of the past 8 years that prompts people to consider options to move out of the country. I’ve heard from people who were adults in 1968 that what we’re currently going through doesn’t compare to how they experienced 1968 yet most Americans don’t have that benefit of perspective. Nor is that comparison comforting. This is what we are experiencing now and at a time when we don’t have the same collective experiences – pop culture phenomenon that unite us or a handful of voices to calm our nerves. People are worried and frustrated as most things in their world are in a state of unrest – personal finances, personal safety, and the broader world isn’t sounding much better.
For we need a little music, need a little laughter
Need a little singing, ringing through the rafter
All of these things are bothering me too. I’ve noticed our household grocery bill has gone up by $50 a week and I’ve written about my concerns over world events and the situation in the US. And yet we’re supposed to move about our day as though nothing is wrong. Go to work. Be productive. Get the kids to practice. Stream some TV. Go to bed and repeat the next day.
It doesn’t work like that. People carry all of these worries with them. If we ignore them at work and don’t talk about them at home, they go unaddressed and the pressure continues to build. It’s no wonder that 70% of US adults feel some level of anxiety about keeping themselves and their families safe.
How are we supposed to defuse this anxiety? Gail, mid-60s and now living in rural North Carolina shared this observation. “If you're not optimistic about life in general, I don't know how you make it from the things that we watch on the news. I watch as much as I can to stay up on everything, but it's not that long of viewing with the news and stuff, because it really can make it depressing.”
Barb, the retired pastor, explained what she’s doing to keep herself centered in the midst of everything. “I continue to find being outdoors, being in nature to be really centering and solace. Being with other people is also good I mean, there are good people and there are kind people and it does it does help to be with people. So I started going back to church regularly, found a family felt church that I think is gonna be a good fit.”
Like Gail and Barb, Marco, mid 20s in Sacramento tries to look for the positive and seeks out connection. “Seeing people I still care about, that always gets me excited, just talk to them, see them, get to see new stuff that's going around, you know, there are some positives in the world. Of course, I don't always want to look on the negatives because that's not going to get you anywhere. It's kind of hard to say because all the negative stuff has been been focused on more than the positive stuff. It's kind of hard to mention the positive stuff. But I'm sure there are positive things going around right now.”
Connection. We clamored for it during lockdown. Why are we ignoring one another now? Reach out with a phone call a visit or a meal. Have a conversation. And don’t be afraid to share how you are doing, really. What is on your mind? How are you coping? There’s much we can learn from each other and find comfort in knowing we are having shared experiences.
And we need a little snappy, happy ever after
We need a little Christmas now.
I wanted to really do Christmas this year. I’ve baked over 1,000 cookies and found moments of happiness sharing these “little bites of love”. It may be window dressing.I know it won’t lower the price of eggs or stop a war but it’s bringing me a sense of connection and that I’m doing something kind for others.
There’s a saying on a sweatshirt I own: “kindness speaks volumes.” That’s what the Christmas spirit is all about. Let’s turn up the volume. Together.
Note: This content originally appeared in Rob’s free newsletter, Reading Between the Lines, published on December 18, 2023. Subscribe here.
I’d love to talk further about the Navigating to a New Normal program as well as empathy in and at work. Please feel free to reach out via rob@robvolpe.expert and we can set up time to talk.