A Christmas Letter

For years, I agonized over whether or not I could send a single lady Christmas card. I LOVE putting those photo collage cards of my friends’ families up on my fridge, but it felt sort of weird and tacky to print out carefully designed pictures of MYSELF and send them through the mail, expecting my friends to put ME on THEIR fridge for the year. For a while, I channeled my agonizing into biblically accurate Christmas cards:

(the scripture during the season leading up to Christmas is almost exclusively apocalyptic prophesies. Google it.)

The apocalyptic Advent greetings were fun, but the agonizing over whether or not to send my own single lady Christmas card was…dumb. So I just started doing it. This year’s photo cards are ready to be picked up and mailed out.

But I’ve never written a Christmas *letter.*

You know what I’m talking about: the newsy highlight reel that gets folded up and tucked into the glittery Christmas card mailing, the place where everybody’s accomplishments can be listed and applauded, the Best Of of the extended family accomplishments. It feels weird to write one of those family-oriented missives from my single-lady household. But you know what?

I’m gonna do it, anyway.

Dear friends and family,

2023 was not a fantastic year. The dog had a cancerous butt wart. My job got cut in half. Mice commandeered my kitchen, I finally got Covid, and the church defrocked me.

After several years of mostly unintentional downward mobility, I’m ending this year having earned less money than any year since I was a full-time volunteer. I’ve interviewed for various jobs and applied for various fellowships and none of them has been the right thing. I have to move again, and I don’t know where I will end up.

It’s probably a mid-life crisis, and it sucks.

And: like every apocalypse, the crisis is intensely revealing. I made a list of Things I Learned This Year, which mostly boils down to the fact that I am deeply loved and disgustingly privileged. I’ll probably write about some of those things here from this new online pulpit.

There has also been a lot of joy this year. I drove 3,000 miles this fall and fell in love with the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I spent a lot of time in a garden marveling at seeds and compost. I hiked and read and drank very good coffee. I took a poetry class. And I disentangled myself from some death-dealing systems that have been siphoning the life out of me for years.

So, it’s not been all bad.

If you’ve been a longtime reader of my various blog iterations over the decades, you know that my writing is sometimes personal, sometimes theological, regularly salty and sarcastic. I plan to keep writing that way, about whatever ends up piquing my curiosity, and you’re welcome to join me. Some of what I write will be free; some of it will be paywalled and for subscribers only. You can push the subscribe button at the end of this letter and help me pay for a storage unit for my books and a new health insurance policy while I navigate this next move.

Here’s to a new year filled with more joy and less violence.

With love,

Dana

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