On Dasher, on Dancer, on Prancer, on Vixen
And some on Comet, on Cupid, on Donner, on Blitzen too...
Hey y’all,
What a week. First, my heart goes out to the victims of the tornadoes in Arkansas, Tennessee, Illinois, and especially Kentucky. The destruction these storms wrought is cataclysmic, and I have cried more than once reading about the tragedy our fellow Americans have experienced. Keep them in your thoughts and in your prayers.
I have included a link to an article I wrote for 100 Days in Appalachia earlier this week in which I list ways you can donate. If you can, please do. Folks need all the help they can get.
This is the last newsletter I’ll write for 2021, so I want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. For me, 2021 was a year of amazing professional accomplishments. New bylines include Business Insider and Newsweek, and I started at 100 Days in Appalachia as a contributing editor – a job I absolutely love and am so blessed to have. I also want to thank Holly Baxter and the folks at the Independent for continuing to provide a home for my writing and for all the support and encouragement and nurturing they have given me this year and every year since I first wrote for them in 2016.
Personally, 2021 was better than 2020, which I think was rough for all of us. I hope 2022 is better. It will definitely bring some big changes, as I prepare to move to Johnson City, Tennessee. I don’t think I have mentioned it in this newsletter, but I was recently accepted to graduate school!
In the Fall of next year, I will begin pursuing a Masters of Arts in Appalachian Studies at East Tennessee State University. I’m very excited for this new challenge and to be back in the academy. I fully plan to keep writing, though, so don’t you worry – you’ll still have me in your inbox most Saturdays!
As always, you can become a Patron for as little as $3 a month, make a one-time donation using PayPal, or buy me a book to help with my research. All contributions are greatly appreciated, no matter how big or how small. None are expected, though. This newsletter is and will remain free. Though this week, I’d rather you donate to victims of the tornado than to me.
Finally, I just want to thank you all for being such wonderful readers. You have made this year one I’ll never forget. Thank you for reading every week and for supporting my work. It means the world to me.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
x. Skylar
On Dasher, on Dancer, on Prancer, on Vixen…
Christmas is my favorite time of year. Starting when I lived in Bowling Green, and continuing into my time in Chicago, I would throw massive Christmas parties. This party was always my favorite night of the year.
In college, with my shoestring budget, the décor consisted of a single Dollar General Christmas tree and a string of gawdy lights. As I grew into an urbane middle class Guppy, though, things improved. I had Christmas trees in my living room, my bedroom, my kitchen. I decorated the bathroom. The lights were turned down low, candles burned, carols played. In Chicago in December, snow could often be counted on, conspiring to turn my apartment into the coziest Christmas grotto you can imagine.
My Christmas party became a big deal in my social circles. People would plan for it weeks ahead of time. Some friends flew in out of town just to attend. It wasn’t that I did anything particularly exciting. The first year I went out-of-pocket for the booze, spending about $300 on alcohol. But most people brought their own, meaning I was still drinking my Christmas liquor on the Fourth of July. Otherwise, I laid out little snacks bought at Target, but that was it.
What people came for, I discovered, was the atmosphere and company. Most of my friends were young professionals, 20- and 30-somethings who moved to the city from elsewhere. Some had grown up in the suburbs, but many were – like me – from out of state. For them, my party might be the most “Christmasy” thing they got to do before heading home for the holidays. It put them in the holiday spirit.
For others who weren’t travelling, it might be the only Christmas activity they attended. For them, my party was their holiday. “It reminds me of home,” one friend told me one year.
I wasn’t the only friend who threw holiday parties. Every December was busy, with many gatherings to attend. But – and this may be arrogant – I still think mine was the best.
In 2018 I moved to North Carolina, and my Christmas parties ceased. In truth, I simply didn’t have enough friends in Jacksonville to warrant throwing one. The friends I did have were married with kids. They were (understandably) more focused on their own Christmas celebrations, and my friends from out-of-town were – for logistical as well as cultural reasons – less keen to fly to a military town on the North Carolina coast than one of the largest cities in the country.
I really miss these parties. Honestly, since I stopped throwing them, it has been increasingly difficult for me to get into the Christmas spirit. This year, especially, Christmas has felt more like a chore than a celebration.
That’s disappointing, because I really love this time of year. The decorations, the weather, even the music (which it seems most people despise) really make me happy. Last night, I watched “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” which like millions of Americans has been a tradition since childhood. But… nothing.
I’ve been thinking a lot about why I haven’t been in the Christmas spirit since leaving Chicago, and I really think it is because Christmas is about people. You can decorate all you want, but if you don’t have friends and family around you, Christmas is just clutter. The magic comes not just in gathering together with your nearest and dearest, but in really enjoying one another’s company.
The first Christmas after I moved from Chicago was actually spent back in Chicago, but it was hardly festive. I had flown up a week or so before to attend the funeral of my best friends’ mom. Her daughters – all three of them – are among the best friends I’ve ever had, and she herself was like another mom to me.
Her name was Patti, and she is one of the most amazing women I’ve ever known. I first met her Easter 2012, when her daughter Clover invited me to her family’s celebration. Far from being a small gathering, the house was brimming with bodies – and with love. Aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends all gathered for a giant meal, a cake in the shape of a lamb, and an Easter Egg hunt for the kids.
I helped hide eggs in the back yard, which looked like a fairy garden – replete with a tree blossoming in soft pink and a small coy pond – and shotgunned a beer with Clover’s then-brother-in-law as the children hunted eggs.
Little did I know that I had found a second family. Yet from then on, I spent many (if not most) holidays with Patti and her family. Patti and her husband Dave never made me feel anything less than included. The same is true for the rest of the family.
I can’t think of Christmas without thinking of Patti. Every Christmas Eve I would go over to her house for their annual Christmas party. We did a white elephant gift exchange which was always a riot. But what I really remember is the warmth and the love. Holidays can be stressful, and families have a knack of getting on one another’s nerves like no other – probably because there’s a level of comfort that comes with being around people who you know accept and love you no matter what, so you feel like you can be just a little more honest and real with them, including when you’re annoyed – but all that tension melted away at Christmas.
The kids ran around, excited about their gifts and the impending visit of Santa. The adults gorged themselves on baked goods and booze. Every year, they ordered from Portillo’s, a famous Chicago restaurant, and there was always enough food to feed a small army. I always went home full and buzzing, both from the love and the liquor.
I thought the world of Patti. I didn’t tell her enough when she was alive. Despite how much I loved Christmas in Chicago, the rest of the year could be very lonely. Part of it, as I’ve discussed previously, was that I loathed my career in mortgages. But I will always be grateful for that career, because without it I never would have befriended Clover – who as far as I’m concerned is not just my friend, she’s my sister, are her sisters Courtney and Heather. And it gave me Patti and Dave.
I don’t want to say that the Christmas spirit left me because Patti died. I think, like most things in life, it’s far more complicated than that. COVID certainly hasn’t helped make the spirit bright, and my grandfather is basically the love child of Ebeneezer Scrooge and the Grinch. Plus, as I said earlier, there are practical reasons for why my Christmas parties stopped.
But December will always remind me of Patti, not just because she died on December 14, 2018, but because she loved this holiday. She loved all holidays, actually. She and I shared what can only be described as a passion bordering on an obsession with seasonal décor. She’s the only person I know besides me who decorated for Saint Patrick’s Day, and she did it so much better than I ever have.
Mariah Carey is most famous for her festive hit “All I Want for Christmas is You,” but arguably one of her most moving songs is another Christmas ditty – “I Miss You Most at Christmastime.” In it, Miss Carey laments a lost love (it’s never clear if the person has died or is simply not there) who is not home for the holidays. It’s a little saccharine, but it’s incredibly affecting if you’re a sentimentalist like me.
For those who lost loved ones, Christmas can be a bleak time of year. People are practically forced to be jolly, and we are inundated with messaging about how this is a time for families and togetherness and yada, yada, yada.
Three years ago, around this time, I was on a plane back to Chicago preparing to bury one of the best people I’ve ever known. This year, just north of me in Kentucky, many, many families are preparing to do the same. For them, Christmas will forever be linked to the tragic deaths of their loved ones in the worst tornado outbreak the Bluegrass State has ever seen. I’m holding them up in prayer this year. I hope you will, too.
So too do I think of my grandparents’ friend Shirley. She’s in the hospital right now, but she’s doing better and – with any luck – will be home before Christmas. I hope that she can come up and celebrate with us.
Shirley’s husband died a few years ago. Her only son died many years before that. She has no grandchildren. She has no family nearby. Except us. We are Shirley’s family – Mamaw, Papaw, me. My aunt is down from Ohio and is taking Mamaw to see Shirley at the hospital today. We are her family.
This can be the loneliest time of year for folks, especially those who – like Shirley – have no family to turn to. Shirley has us. I always had my family I could’ve travelled home to see, plus I had Patti and her family. So this was never me. But my heart breaks thinking of all the people who are spending this Christmas alone. Darlene Love is right. Nobody ought to be alone on Christmas.
You may have noticed by now that this is more of a free write than usual. There is no point to this. I didn’t know what I was going to write about when I sat down. I’ve kind of just let the words pour out of me. And the words that poured out of me were words of grief. Funny, that.
I’m actually doing okay. I don’t want you to think I’m overwhelmed with sadness. I’m not. But I think that this time of year in particular has changed from a time I look forward to with heady anticipation to a time I am apathetic about, at best.
I’m fully open to the possibility that will change. I hope it does. Next year, if – as planned – I am one semester into a graduate program, I imagine the holiday spirit may return. Finishing the semester will add another layer of celebration and excitement to December, and simply being around people and out and about in town – with all the trappings of Christmas – will no doubt help get me in the festive spirit.
I hope it does. I would love to get the Christmas spirit back. This time of year used to bring me so much joy. Now it doesn’t really bring me pain or anguish or sadness – it just brings me nothing. I don’t feel much of anything. I’m not sad. I’m not in a bad mood. I’m not depressed. I feel perfectly fine.
But I want to feel more than fine. I want to feel festive. I want to feel jolly. I want to feel Christmas.
Ha. That reminds me of the Faith Hill song from the Grinch movie. How do those lyrics go?
Where are you Christmas?
Why can't I find you?
Why have you gone away?
Where is the laughter
You used to bring me?
Why can't I hear music play?
My world is changing
I'm rearranging
Does that mean Christmas changes too?
Maybe someday the Christmas spirit will return to me. Until then, I’ll just keep going through the motions. I’ll trim a tree. I’ll listen to carols. I’ll watch the Rudolph Claymation special. I’ll explain why actually Love, Actually is a good film and anyone who says it isn’t is a cynical bore. I will keep trying to reclaim Christmas.
I hope you all are having a merrier Christmas season than I am. From the bottom of my heart, I am grateful for you all – for reading this newsletter, for the generous gifts of books, for the donations you’ve seen, and for your friendship and support over the past year.
This is the last “Sky’s the Limit” of 2021. I don’t know when I’ll be back in the New Year – sometime in February, probably, though it could be March – but I will be back. Until then, you keep the spirit of Christmas alive for me – in December and throughout the year.
I love you all. Merry Christmas.
Love,
Skylar
On Comet, on Cupid, on Donner, on Blitzen…
Many people despise Christmas music. I hear it all the time. Even though I just got done writing 2000 words on how I’m not really feeling Christmasy this year, I confess that I love a good Christmas song. I’ve been listening to Christmas music nonstop since just after Thanksgiving.
I think part of the reason people hate Christmas music is because they don’t hear anything but the standards. There’s this novelty song that came out in the UK back in the 2000s. The comedian Peter Kay, performing as Geraldine McQueen (an obvious parody of Pop Idol winner Michelle McManus), put out “Once Upon a Christmas Song,” a song which poses the question – why does no one make new Christmas music?
Well, guess what? They do. So I’ve decided to compile a list of Christmas music you may not have heard but that I think you should consider adding to your holiday playlist. I love these songs.
“One More Sleep” by Leona Lewis is an upbeat song about waiting for your boo to come home on Christmas Eve
“Christmas Lights” by Coldplay is a melancholy tune about fighting with your boo on Christmas
“I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” by Casting Crowns is a moving and fresh take on an old classic
“Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays” by *NSync is a fun modern classic
“Christmas Time is Here” by Toni Braxton is a beautiful cover of a song everyone knows from “A Charlie Brown Christmas”
“My Only Wish (This Year)” by Britney Spears is about wanting to fall in love at Christmas
“Cuddle Up” by Catey Shaw is a fun song to get you and your boo in the mood this holiday
“Mistletoe” by Lucy Hale is another up-tempo ditty to get you and your boo in the festive spirit
“Go Tell It ON the Mountain” by Dolly Parton is sure to put a smile on your face
“Underneath the Christmas Lights” by Sia is a hauntingly beautiful Christmas song
“Merry Christmas” by Ed Sheeran and Elton John just came out this year but is sure to be a classic
What I’ve been up to…
For The Independent, I wrote what I can only describe as a love letter to Bowling Green following the devastating tornadoes in Kentucky last weekend.
For 100 Days in Appalachia, I compiled a list of ways you can help the victims of the Kentucky tornadoes.
I was accepted to East Tennessee State University, where I will be pursuing a Master of Arts in Appalachian Studies beginning in the Fall of 2022! I’m so excited to dive back in academia and continue my research and education in all things Appalachia.
What I’ve been reading…
My friend Molly McCaffrey wrote this moving piece about her experience living through the tornadoes in Bowling Green, Kentucky. It really illustrates just how frightening it was. Give it a read.
Time Magazine named Elon Musk its 2021 Person of the Year. It’s a controversial choice, for sure, but I think they do a good job of justifying it – and I say that as someone who has no love for Musk and what he represents. I think he’s awful. But remember, POY is not an honor. Hitler was POY. Trump was POY. It’s just who is the most influential or consequential person of that year, and I think Musk fits the bill – whether we like his influence and the consequences of his actions or not. Private capital entering space for the first time is a big shift in how humanity frames and understands space exploration, and it definitely represents a new chapter in our history as a spacefaring species.
What I’ve been listening to…
Since I just compiled a list of Christmas songs, I’ll give you something not Christmas. Here is Flatt Lonesome doing a bluegrass cover of the Game of Thrones theme song
A picture of the puppy…