Notes On: How to Romanticise December

From playlists to reading lists to recipes, here's how to spice up December (because 'tis the damn season, after all)

Dec 01, 2024

"I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights” — Maya Angelou

“Snow was falling, so much like stars filling the dark trees that one could easily imagine its reason for being was nothing more than prettiness.” ― Mary Oliver

The third (and last) time I fell in love, I realised something that changed my whole perspective on December. If you’re in love – or, even better, newly in love – December is the most beautiful time of year. Everything feels like it’s made for only you; the wreaths, the twinkling lights, the velveteen parties shimmering with bubbles, the hungover Sunday walks, the concept of snow, those delicate petal-like formations, each different and unique, mesmerising as you watch them from the sofa and decide, mutually, to order a pizza because falling in love is all about indulgence. But if you’re not in love? Or if you’re in love but grieving, or overwhelmed, or low because you’re between jobs and you’re not sure what to do with your life? Well, December is the loneliest of places. An ice-creaking shadow-like land that leaves you looking from the outside, through windows, at the amber glow of other people’s contentment. I attend Christmas parties from outside.

It's a powerful image: a solitary figure standing on a dark street, watching as a window illuminates like a stage and strangers sip drinks and make small talk, unaware. It’s all there, isn’t it? Connection v. isolation; light v. dark. But the thing about light – whether literal, or metaphorical – is that it doesn’t exist without darkness.

Anne Frank put it beautifully when she wrote: “look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.” It’s true; light both defies – and defines – its darkness. Without darkness, we simply wouldn’t value the light. Which is partly why I like to see the festive period as – not a series of religious or cultural ‘holidays’ – but an excuse to seek - and to celebrate - a spark of light amidst the darkness of winter.

Because just one winking, star-like pinprick can act like a reminder of the many loves of our lives; as well as the wonders we’re yet to experience. A candle held not for right now, perhaps, but for a future in which the sadness has edged itself away: a future of eating grilled cheese on kitchen countertops or watching your sister open the present you’ve been planning for months. That first sip of a peppermint mocha. The next time you bring something truly exciting into your home (a new kitten, perhaps, or a second-hand table you found at the back of an Oxfam shop). This world is full of things to look forward to and - let’s be honest - to fall in love with.

So, I hope this newsletter helps you fall in love; with baking, or poetry, or perhaps a new song. I hope it helps guide you towards your light, whatever that might be (in the least woo-woo way possible). I hope it soothes and inspires you at the same time; I hope it reads like a pinprick in a velvet sky.

Notes On: Spicing Up December

Let’s start with a vibe check. December is for sipping toffee cider in pubs with open fires and quiet music. It’s for the album evermore, and the song '‘tis the damn season’, and re-watching Gavin and Stacey. It’s for bright red lipstick and gingerbread lattes and watching the sun crack over the horizon in the morning like an egg.
December is for re-reading. I want you to find some of your favourite books. Dig them out from bookshelves, from beside plants or under your bed. Savour the sentences. Notice how you’ve forgotten whole chunks of the plot. This is part of the beauty of novels: they’re so baggy, you can get lost even in ones you think you know so well.
Make a plan for your gifts this year. Are you making them at home? Do you know what you want to get, from where? However you like to organise - I love a colour-coded excel spreadsheet, or handwritten notes - I want you to write out all the people you’d like to get gifts for, your ideas, and your budget. Approaching it like this can remove that whole oh-my-god-i-don’t-know-what-to-get that comes, sometimes, the week before Christmas. If you’re anything like me, it’ll give you a lot satisfaction to tick off (or colour-in) each one you complete. (PS, let me know if you’d like a gift guide, bc my love language is gift giving and I’m obsessed).
Christmas Markets are as close as we’ll ever get to living in snow globe. They feel unreal - with all those sugar-dusted, deep-fried foods, those lights, all those wide-eyed strangers with cold noses. But they are real, they really are, and still, they’re magical. Spend an afternoon wandering around your nearest one. Try at least one new food/drink. Take lots of photos. Afterwards, go to the pub and order mulled wine - or toffee cider.
Do little things to bring joy to other people. Buy a coffee for the person behind you. Get flowers from a supermarket, wrap them in newspaper and string, and give them to your mum (or your sister, or your friend). Volunteer at a soup kitchen, or a shelter. Get a packet of biscuits and leave them on someone’s doorstep. Write a note and fold it between some pages at a bookshop. Tell someone you love their scarf, or their nails, or their smile. Kindness beats within us - don’t stifle it.
At some point this month, decide how you are going to organise next year. Are you someone who loves a wall calendar? Do you write notes physically in a diary? Or are you more into online organisation? Either way, find thirty minutes this month to write in everyone’s birthdays, key events, and things you’re Either way, find thirty minutes this month to write in everyone’s birthdays, key events, and things you’re looking forward to in 2025.
Plan a sparkle evening. Tell everyone they need to wear something velvet, or glittery, or in some way bejewelled. Spend the whole evening drinking sparkling wine - or a bubbly soft drink - and eating puddings. Brownies, cookies, get every guest to bring one, and share them all. Get sparklers, toast marshmallows over candles, put edible glitter in the drinks and turn the music up too loud. Dance and laugh and sing and drink and tell your friends how much you love them. Allow yourself to shimmer, unashamed.
And finally, don’t take anything too seriously. Remind yourself - in moments of overwhelm - that we are all just organisms on a floating rock amidst flaming balls in which - as we gaze on them from afar - we find infinite beauty. We are all making it up, writing the script as we go, filing tax returns and sweeping coffee grinds into the bin and weeping over old texts and shouting I LOVE YOUs to friends in the early hours of the morning and waking up wondering if we’re doing it right. Remind yourself that there’s no such thing.

Your December Soundtrack

From glittery nights to cosy nights to dark nights, these are all the playlists you’ll need for every single mood this winter.

A December Reading List (according to the ‘dark nights’ playlist):

“The Long Day Is Over”: Books to curl up with after a long cold day, to sweep you up and carry you off into a mystical, imagined world.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

“Tolerate It”: Books with the kind of writing so superb that it leaves you breathless, and the kind of topic matter so devastating it leaves you with heartache and, at the same time, an odd sort of completeness, a kind of gratitude to be reading about these experiences (as opposed to living them).

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

“April Come She Will”: Nonfiction to make you feel seen, and remind you that the best is yet to come.

Wintering by Katherine May
Conversations on Love by Natasha Lunn

“Famous Blue Raincoat”: Poetry to help you see the beauty in the cold.

Snow by Louis Macneice
Winter Trees by William Carlos Williams
February Evening in New York by Denise Levertov

Some Winter Recipes

Emily Dickinson’s Gingerbread

Mix 1 cup molasses, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 cup butter, 2 cups flour, 1 tsp ginger, and 1 tsp cinnamon.

Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 25 minutes.

One Final Note:

I started this newsletter by talking about how much easier it is to exist in December when you’re in love. And, in the words of Mary Oliver, “I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.”

Because although December may favour those who are in love, that doesn’t mean it favours those in love with another person. Today, for example, I’ve fallen in love with the way my breath forms clouds in the cold air; how my cat curls into a croissant shape next to me on my desk as I work; the song ‘A Case Of You’, which I’d never listened to before, not really. And this – this feeling of hope, of excitement, of beauty in the world – this is what I like to think of as the light. But it’s only visible in the context of the darkness – of exhaustion, and apathy, and the sense that your heart is so heavy it might sink to the bottom of you. Which is to say: we contain multitudes. We are never one thing; we’re a patchwork of all the things we’ve ever experienced, read, dreamed, lost, destroyed, forgiven, hoped. The solitary and the connected; the hopeful and the apathetic; the light and the dark.

I hope, this month, you have a toffee cider that fizzes on your tongue. I hope you wear velvet at least once. I hope you say the phrase ‘tis the damn season’ in conversation, even if the people you’re talking to don’t get the reference. And if you’re feeling alone, or overwhelmed, or deeply sad, I hope you find it within yourself to seek the light. To read a poem by Mary Oliver or chant the bridge of ‘That’s So True’ in your lunch break or spend hours searching for the perfect personalised gift for your mum or eat an entire advent calendar in one evening because you can always buy another one. I hope you string fairy lights from windows and hold flames to unlit candles. In other words: I hope you seek the kind of light that will defy the darkness.

Paid subs – let me know what you’d like me to write about in the upcoming weeks. Thank you so much for being here. It means more than I can say.

Until next time,

Hannah xxx