Hope For The Holidays

Thanksgiving this year will be different.

It should be different, given that we are in the midst of a global pandemic. But right now that fact feels like the last few bites of pumpkin pie after all the turkey and mashed potatoes: A lot to swallow.

Sometimes I think back to the early spring, when we thought that social distancing would last a couple months at most. I like to think that we were being more hopeful than naive. But no matter how you see it, it’s been longer than those couple months. (And we’re still counting.)

This year has been a lot of things, but business as usual is not one of them. We’ve all been riding our own rollercoasters with who knows how many dips, dives, and climbs. We’ve all been the person to hold up someone we love. And we’ve all been the person needing someone to lean on for us to keep going.

But we’ve kept moving forward, all of us together. It’s something we’ll keep doing too. Day after day. We’ll keep guiding each other through the darkness, taking turns holding the flashlights.

Like the rest of the year, our holiday season will not be business as usual either. And as much as that will challenge each of us, that’s okay. Some of us do it begrudgingly, but we all have a remarkable ability to adapt as humans.

This year, we’ve all had to let a lot of things go. Travel plans, events, and so much more. Perhaps to oversimplify it, this year we’ve needed to let go of our expectations. We’ve adapted and readjusted constantly. Time and time again, we’ve needed to be flexible.

Amidst all the bending and letting go, there is one thing I’ve held onto more tightly than anything else this year. That’s hope. 

Some days I’ve lost track of it. Tired, I’ve set hope down in the wrong place when it gets a little too heavy to hold. But after a day or two, I scour every surface until I find it. Because even on the days when it’s too heavy, I’ve found that every day is easier to carry when you have hope.

Hope gives you a reason to keep going. It’s a reason to not give up. Hope helps you know that you aren’t alone.

One of my favorite Christmas movies has a line that says the holiday season is about perpetual hope. (Kevin’s mom says it in Home Alone, if you were wondering which movie.) 

I’m not sure if hope is in short supply for people this year or not. But with all the adjustments of holiday plans, it feels like it might be. And even if it isn’t, would there really be anything wrong with a little more hope in the world? As Kevin McCallister says, I don’t think so.

Hope has magic. When you give a bit of yours to someone else, you somehow end up with even more of your own. You create hope for yourself when you help create it for others. And that hope can multiply to so much more.

I think that’s the kind of holiday magic we could all use a little more of this year.