Despite the darkness, it’s a wonderful time of year

It starts every year on Dec. 1. I flip open the calendar and the page suddenly fills with colored scribbles: birthdays, holidays, school breaks, parties, family gatherings, trips, dates with friends, shopping sprees. There’s just so much to do!

When I walk downtown, I can feel it in the air — the excitement and the stress of the end-of-year festivities. The supermarkets already have their decorations up and their aisles filled with cleverly packaged products stamped with unfortunate puns about one holiday or another. Farolitos line the rooftops, the Plaza is bedecked with spiderwebs of bright lights, and whether it’s for the benefit of the tourists or the locals, I can’t deny how beautiful it is.

I remember the sweetness of waking up every December morning to find a little chocolate behind the window of a cardboard advent calendar. I still enjoy wearing cheesy Christmas sweaters and singing along to off-key Christmas carols, and eating latkes (potato pancakes traditionally eaten during Hanukkah) is the best.

But I wonder: When we peel away all the commercialism and dysfunctional family rom-coms, what’s left? What’s the reason behind all this madness? Why exactly do we light the menorah and decorate the tree with lights? Why does nearly every faith have a holiday at this time of year?

Well, I think that we forget about the dark far too often. Few of us celebrate the solstice — the longest night of the year — on Dec. 21, but I think that all our celebrations secretly give us comfort as the night stretches on. And so we light candles, farolitos and Christmas lights, and we sing songs to honor the dark and convince the sun to rise again, as people have done for thousands of years.

If it’s that simple, then why the frantic gift shopping, the awful holiday carols stuck in my head, the tinsel hanging absolutely everywhere? What purpose do they serve?

Some would say tradition, some would say money, some would say distraction, some would say fun.

But personally, I don’t really mind the reason because, honestly, when we bundle up and wander down Canyon Road on Christmas Eve, the lights, songs and hot chocolate really do feel like magic. Maybe I’ll always wonder what it is exactly that adds the quality of mystery and possibility to mistletoe or frosted glass, but who cares? There’s so much pain and terror in the world, and during a winter that, for all its lack of snow and storm clouds, seems darker to me than any I can remember, I think we all need an excuse to sit down with those we love and remember that after all, it’s a wonderful life.

Hannah Laga Abram is a junior at the Santa Fe Waldorf School. Contact her at ceciliasycamore@gmail.com.