Our Holiday DNA
There used to be a Sag Harbor Homemakers Club, my mom was a member. Ladies would meet in one of the local churches and work on crafts, side by side, while keeping up with the local chatter and stories of families and friends. Mom would come home with wonderful things she had made, a Santa Claus from a plastic gallon milk jug, winter scenes housed in gift-wrapped Pringles cans and my favorite the ‘fishing girl ornament’ from felt which still hangs on my tree every year. My Mom enjoyed this gathering so much, and was really proud of her work. She would collect recycled materials throughout the year to share with others. My mom always thought of others.
When you drove around town, you would see the front doors of other local ‘homemakers’ donned with their homemade Santa Claus, or pumpkins, turkeys, Easter bunnies, and other crafts they created together over the years. Everything was such a treasure, especially because they were made with love. There was pride in their work, in creating something from next to nothing, displaying their goods through the holidays and then storing them carefully in the attic until the next season arrived.
This was also a place where lasting friendships were made and kindness abounded. There was no sign of dog eat dog, selfishness, excess, or jealousy-no one cared about the car you drove, the neighborhood you lived in or the clothes you wore. These women had lived their lives, worked hard to raise their families, and were now coming together to form friendships after the busyness of life had not always allowed them to do so. It was a peaceful place, a day of the week everyone looked forward to with a beautiful, enduring sense of community.
To my knowledge, there is no more ‘Homemakers Club’ here, the ladies no longer come together for coffee, crafts and friendship. I begin to wonder, why don’t people seem to gather anymore? Are our homes so comfortable with 300 channels and endless streaming opportunities on TV, grocery delivery, take-out - that we don’t want to leave our front doors? (Of course, the pandemic has created a more cloistered sense of home.) Does anyone hang their homemade Santa Clauses on their doors? Many churches are close to empty, some closing, others being sold. We seem to have reached a place of excess. It used to be that finding someone’s lost pencil was like winning the lottery. And now beautiful furniture and other household items are left on the curb with ‘Free’ signs. It’s possible for you to furnish an entire home just by driving around looking for ‘Free’ signs.
It’s just that I feel the world changing right before my very eyes, don’t you? The simple, joyful home-spun way things used to be seems to be disappearing and being replaced by the glitter and glow of ‘more’, ‘bigger’, ‘shinier’. I wonder, has every generation felt this way? Have people throughout time experienced this evolution of society and humankind right before their very eyes? Can we slow it down? Should we slow it down? What kind of culture are we evolving into?
When I think of my mom and the Homemakers Club, when I think of the Santa and the winter scene in the Pringles can, her sewing box, the handknitted argyle socks, the love she had for everything and everyone, our trips to church every Sunday, our backyard kickball games-I think that is the world as it should be. I keep on trying to ‘drag my feet to slow the circles down’, to hold onto the simple, the joyful, the beautiful, especially now during this holiday season. Our family traditions, that have been carefully carved over time and live within us, are part of our archeological DNA, the fiber of who we are and what we will leave behind. So my thought is, try not to let them go, they are - who we are.