On Defining a Season

a letter about tenderness, wintertime, and Claire Keegan's SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE

Dear friends,

First, a note: today’s newsletter speaks at length about my love of Christmas and winter. If you rather hate the holiday (and reading anything about it puts you in a grim mood), I do hope you’ll still give it a chance but also there’s absolutely no judgment on my end if this is one that you’d like to skip.

That aside, I must ask: how are you? Have you tended to yourself today? I’ve taken to asking myself the same question, if only because it can be easy to forget to care for ourselves during the hustle and bustle of the holidays. Goodness knows we could all use the reminder to eat a snack, move our bodies, and text our friends.

Since I last wrote you, it has been busy: I graduated, my family visited, theatre projects have gotten well underway, things at school picked up (rapidly), the term then ended (sadly). (Have I told you how much I love teaching teenagers? A conversation for another day, but I really do.) And so, again: busy, but such is life—and at the moment, I don’t think I’d want it any other way.

Fortunately, I’m aided by the fact that we are currently in my favorite time of year. It’s hard to complain when you’re in a season you love. I make this obvious to anyone I meet but I’m an unabashed fan of Christmas; ask my sister and she’ll tell you: I am one of the annoying few who shamelessly plays Christmas music in July. I delight in the rituals of the season: the lights, the carols, the giving, the gathering. My religious connections to the holiday are loose, but I’ve endeavored over the past several years to find a meaningful way of “keeping Christmas” beyond the domain of the church.

But I’m also—and this is where I’m often met with more surprise—a fan of winter more generally. Long after the Christmas decorations have been packed away, the temperatures stubbornly clinging to freezing, I still find joy in the season and its shorter days. I know this is unusual, a rare answer when asked one’s favorite season, and, frankly, I’m not even sure I could tell you why I love winter so. It’s interesting how I feel compelled to wear my favorite season like a badge, how we all wield our own preference around like the result of a personality quiz or a relation to our zodiac signs—but also I get it. Surely the season in which we feel we thrive the most says a lot about how we choose to live.

+

Pardon another question, only somewhat related: what makes a book a “winter book”? I ask because I recently finished Claire Keegan’s celebrated novella, Small Things Like These, and to me, it is a book to be read only between the months of December and February. I could be literal and argue that Keegan makes the very same claim, setting the book at Christmastime in a small Irish town in 1985.

Clocking in at just over one hundred pages, our time in this setting is short—but length is no matter under Keegan’s deft hand. We meet Bill Furlong, a devoted father and husband, a coal merchant, and a well-known neighbor in this small town, who finds his own values at odds with the reality of the Irish laundries that still plague his community. Keegan writes with intention, not a word wasted; what results is a moving and understated Christmas tale.

I would be remiss to call it a happy story, but it’s far from hopeless. Often, when I’m stressed or overwhelmed, the introvert in me thinks about escaping for a long walk in the woods, my mind free to wander because it’s just me and the snow. Reading Small Things Like These, I found a portal to the same sense of solitude—where, for just a moment, even in a crowd, I as reader am gifted the same minute’s reflection as Furlong himself has. And here there’s hope because Furlong refuses to believe the world is inclined to cynicism, and here there’s also hope because Keegan leads me to believe the same.

Let me note that I recommend the book knowing not everyone will enjoy it. I’m a reader who likes books where little action happens. In fact, my first draft of this newsletter focused on Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory, a short story I try to read every December. If you haven’t yet come across it yet, I hope you will take fifteen minutes to read it now (here’s a link). And when you return, perhaps you’ll agree with me that the story’s magic lies in that so much of it is unremarkable. Buddy and his friend go out, save their money, bake a cake, nothing more. In Small Things Like These, Furlong goes to work, speaks to his neighbors, runs errands around town. In my mental escape, I simply go for a walk.

Whereas another season might call for adventure, here in winter, nothing can happen and that can still feel meaningful. Might we say winter is a celebration of stillness, of retreat, of gentleness? Perhaps what I’m really trying to put words to is how a season aligns with an approach to life, and how I like to think that winter matches my own, an approach in which kindness and care are both lodged in the quiet moments of living or, to cite Keegan, “the things which, when added up, [amount] to a life.”

+

Of course, what I reflect on here is not new. I’m sure we have all heard of hygge, the Danish concept of quiet comfort that seems to be cited in abundance around this time. There’s also a recent popular book called Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times that is sitting in my pile to read here at home, and based on my writing of this newsletter, I expect I will quite enjoy it. In the absence of actually reading it, what I’ll take away now from the title is how a season can translate to a verb.

To that point, I’m also curious what happens when we allow a season to inspire a mindset. I have had several conversations recently with friends about how to live with a spirit of empathy, particularly when faced with individuals we find challenging (that is, to catch me being more blunt, people we don’t like). I’ve appreciated these discussions because they’ve forced me to articulate how I try to nurture relationships, or how I try to go about this thing called living. I still don’t know if I have an answer that feels right or true, but my instinctual response corresponds to my love of winter which corresponds to what Furlong discovers on a long winter walk of his own: that each day is an opportunity to do right, in whatever way that means to you.

I must admit, I was disappointed to read critiques of Small Things Like These as too sentimental. A Christmas Memory is too sentimental. It seems that most things set at this time of year are deemed too sentimental. Am I too sentimental? Probably. But in my love of Christmas, I’m reminded that I don’t care; in my love of winter, I’m reminded that accessing sentiment could actually do us all a world of good. Because in both of these stories, it’s not really about what the characters do, or how much they do, it’s the tenderness with which they go about life. And so, I might as well answer my own question: the most “winter” of art and media are those that see tender in the everyday.

+

That’s all for today, I think! Thanks for being here—I really do appreciate it. For my next newsletter, I’m planning to share 22 pieces of art/media that I adored in 2022. In other words: get ready for recommendations galore. Until then, I’d be delighted to know if any of the above resonated (perhaps you too consider yourself a fan of winter?). Otherwise, I’m wishing you a happy and healthy holiday season, whatever you celebrate—I hope you find warmth, love, and joy where and when you need them all.

Big hugs,
Bella

P.S. On the subject of generosity, please consider donating to a cause important to you this holiday season! I’ll be giving to Crisis, which supports individuals facing homelessness in the UK, if you’d like to join.

P.P.S. Things I’m Consuming

As I’ll have a bucket load of favorites for you in my next letter, I thought I’d use today’s recommendation section to share media that feels particularly representative of Christmas and winter both. I’m also including a photo from my flat’s kitchen window because I want to share in the joy of the first snowfall (!!!), even if it has since melted.

+ Glade’s “The Greatest Gift” Commercial: Can one recommend a commercial? What are rules. I cry, every time.

+ For Emma, Forever Ago: It’s like clockwork how my brain gravitates towards Bon Iver’s album every November. I think there’s something about the spareness of the arrangement that my mind associates with winter. No shame here.

+ Miracle on 34th Street: I’ve been dismayed to learn that so many of my friends here in the UK have not seen this classic Christmas film; if you are in the same boat, we must rectify that. Along with The Polar Express, I know no better movie that captures the spirit of Christmas and the power of belief.

+ The Bear: Andrew Krivak’s beautiful book reads like a fable. Sparse, haunting, and melancholic, it begs to be read under many layers.

+ Dash & Lily: If you have Netflix and nothing to do over the next few days, let me compel you to binge Dash & Lily. I did not like the book, but I’ve watched the series twice now and I think it’s pretty darn perfect as mini-series go. I challenge you not to weep tears of joy by the last episode.