What's Your Perfect Winter Holiday?
Home or Away?
What’s your favourite sort of holiday break?
Some friends are in Cartagena, Columbia, others are heading off to Mauritius, others just fêted the winter solstice at Stonehenge, while some are preparing large festive feasts for extended families. What we dream of evolves over stages and ages, and while some want to take off and fly, I’m among those who appreciate the slower, simpler and closer pleasures of the winter solstice.
Like this excerpt from David Whyte’s poem, Start Close In:
Start with
the ground
you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own
way to begin
the conversation.
Embracing Stillness
My favourite holiday - especially at year’s end - is to embrace stillness. Immobility as the ultimate luxury. I’m not alone, many of the older women writers (of which there are a growing number) I’m enjoying on substack are all digging into home, turning off the tech and hibernating with glee. The joy of not moving is profound, added to by the cold I caught (along with about half the UK) that had me cancelling the few things I had in the agenda.
The delightful daughter is back in the nest, working remotely from her NYC-based job, so we cuddle into couches, cooking and candles. Wander out for a walk or a gym class to work off some of the endless eating and drinking (the cave is being raided daily). Or hang with some neighbours for a cuppa. And movies, lots of movies (list below), coupled with gratitude for the very simplest and most rewarding things in life: family, friends, roots and rituals.
A sure sign of ‘having it all’ in Q3 is the need for nothing and the deepening appreciation of all we have (despite the usual, embarrassing pile of presents growing under the tree). I have no bucket list and am thrilled to leave the idea of ticking boxes (of any kind) far behind. Having trotted a fair part of the globe, there is nowhere I particularly want to go. Living in central London, there is a cornucopia of entertainment and diversion in walking distance, like the hilarious Nikon Comedy Photo Exhibition which illustrates the rest of this missive. Having eaten in enough fancy restaurants, met enough high-powered folk, the best meals (by far) are those consumed at home among those I love best (friend Julia outdid herself last night). Tonight’s menu features a cheese feast with home-made sourdough, a green salad and a decadent red.
From the couch, I relish the leisure time to surf and read - high and low, fiction, news and everything in-between. One of my favourite substacks is Oldster, edited by Sari Botton. She hosts articles by people of all ages with a standard questionnaire featuring how they feel about their current age, eg. ‘This is 63.’ Because, she insists, despite the name, she wants to remind us that we are all, and always, ageing. She’s very close to my 4-Quarter Lives philosophy:
Here’s the most important reason I include people of all ages: I am trying to de-stigmatize and normalize the effects of aging by showing that it’s happening to everyone of every age, all the time.
How To Lengthen Your Life
She recently published a wonderful piece by Alain de Botton called How to Lengthen Your Life. It’s an excerpt from his new book A Therapeutic Journey: Lessons from the School of Life. He pokes fun at the people trying desperately to extend their lifespans with rigorous exercise and nutritious regimes, writing in his inimitable style that “Death can’t reliably be warded off with kale.” It chimes with my reflections re. the holiday season.
He suggests the reason time runs increasingly faster as we age is that our lives get increasingly dull and repetitive. The less you do, the less variety and stimulation in your days, the more they disappear like sand through your grasping fingers. The first 10 years of a child’s life seem endless because every day is an astonishing saga of discovery and learning. The aim, he argues, isn’t to lengthen our time on earth, but to densify it. Or, as the quote my friend G. includes in her email signature, “it’s not the days in your life, but the life in your days that counts.”
One solution often suggested at this point is that we should put all our efforts into discovering fresh sources of novelty. We need to become explorers and adventurers. We must go to Machu Picchu or Angkor Wat, Astana or Montevideo; we need to find a way to swim with dolphins or order a thirteen-course meal at a world-famous restaurant in downtown Lima. That will finally slow down the cruel gallop of time.
I know a lot of people who follow this trail. It’s often a much-admired model of ‘active ageing.’ But he argues that this misunderstands the novelty needed to spice up our ageing brains and spirits. That instead of seeing new things, slowing down time involves seeing familiar things with new eyes because “of course, we have barely scratched the surface. We have grown bored of a world we haven’t begun to study properly.”
He invites us instead to see ageing as a carefully honed life craft. “The pioneers at making life feel longer in the way that counts are not dieticians but artists.” And invites us all to become the creators and designers of our future days. Not (necessarily) by painting or sculpting, but through the gift that artists and young children share with us, the focused attention they train on the world. The daily mysteries that inspire awe.
It is sensible enough to try to live longer lives. But we are working with a false notion of what long really means. We might live to be a thousand years old and still complain that it had all rushed by too fast. We should be aiming to lead lives that feel long because we manage to imbue them with the right sort of open-hearted appreciation and unsnobbish receptivity, the kind that five-year-olds know naturally how to bring to bear. We need to pause and look at one another’s faces, study the sky, wonder at the eddies and colors of the river, and dare to ask the kinds of questions that open others’ souls. We don’t need to add years; we need to densify the time we have left by ensuring that every day is lived consciously—and we can do this via a maneuver as simple as it is momentous: by starting to notice all that we have as yet only seen.
I’m a longtime fan of de Botton and everything he has built at The School of Life. I’ll happily put his advice to good use, especially as it aligns so nicely with my plans and natural pacing. To sit, observing the world and my life from the corner of the couch. And to write about it. (I could rebrand elderberries Sunday Seeing).
Like so many Substackers, I do love looking back and digesting the year that has flowed fast between my often-typing fingers. It's amazing what happened in 2024 all over the world, and in my world, and how much I have already forgotten. But that will be for next week, when I’ve had a bit more couch-recollection time. And can look anew, and with the benefit of hindsight at this year, and what I noticed, or missed or misunderstood.
The holidays are my chance to grab at the fast-disappearing remnants of time and clasp them to my heart for a last hug before I let them sail off on the large barge of my forgetfulness.
Whether you need down time, me time, family time, quality time, or just holiday time, whether you find it near or far, I hope you too can hug close some of what you are yearning for this holiday season.
The Photos
An afternoon walk opened up an unexpected gift of an exhibition, which are the source of the photos in this elderberries. I wandered into the OXO tower along the Southbank where the winners of the NIKON Comedy Wildlife competition (‘conservation through competition’) were being shared - but lasted only a short week. You can find all the winning images here and if you need a last-minute gift, you can gift a 2025 calendar with all these blissful photos here.
The Movies
All We Imagine As Light - three working women in Mumbai, all under the leaden weight of different aspects of a constricted patriarchal culture. An older woman who’s dead husband didn’t do the paperwork to ensure she owned her home, so she’s being evicted. The married woman who’s husband has disappeared into the Germany he emigrated to, sending her only a shiny red rice pot as final goodbye. And the young, vibrant woman who loves the forbidden Muslim man. When they get together to help each other out, magic manifests. Harshly beautiful. Lushly rewarded abroad ( it was the first film from India to win the Grand Prix at Cannes in more than 70 years), not so appreciated at home in India. No surprise. It is a subtle but damning cultural critique.
Wolf Hall - the award-winning TV adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s famous novels. I loved the novels but am less sure about this adaptation. Mark Rylance is a very strange embodiment of Thomas Cromwell (and my man can’t stop complaining about it), it’s hard to follow for those not steeped in Tudor history, but the costumes and contexts are as rich as the intrigue and cruelty.
Her Story - A Chinese film about three women friends where friendship, not romance, takes centre stage, and highly recommended by Caroline Criado Perez, another woman I always listen to. Selling out fast, so am flagging as it’s not likely to stay in cinemas long, despite an extension. Will write more after I’ve seen it.
Mufasa - the prequel to The Lion King, explaining how Scar got his name and his scratch. A tale of sibling rivalry and not-great songs (Miranda ain’t a match for Elton John with the animals), but CGI artistry so magic it transports you to the African plains so realistically I felt I was back on my Kenyan safari. Pretty soon, we won’t need actors anymore. These cubs are as convincing as my kids. Grab one near you and go.
Home. In an unfrenzied setting, with time in circles of beautiful music and light overcoming darkness.