Up until just after September 11th of this year, the day of a brave new beginning for our youngest grandson, I can’t say that I’d ever come across the word ‘stricture’ much … if at all. When it did eventually enter my everyday vernacular, it was in the medical context of a potential flow-reducing narrowing or limiting of, in our grandson’s case, the oesophagus - after its two disconnected parts were surgically pulled and stitched together.
Taken from the Latin ‘strictūra’ meaning tight, compressed, or drawn together, it isn’t a big leap of the imagination to realise that words which gather round its latin origins come with all manner of associations with limitations, self-imposed or otherwise: restrictive, restriction, strict, strictness, stricken, and the word that started it all … ‘stricture’.
But as we pirouette through the month of December dressed in our best party attire, the optics of our own life limitations start to fizz and dissolve as we celebrate the festive season and the new year ahead with a self-promise to unleash and vanquish all of our associations with restrictive tendencies.
We make promises to turn our old self into a new, improved version. We make decisions to go easier on ourselves; we invite indulgence in as we would a long-lost friend, we become kinder, more generous and, in doing so, we create more hope and positivity for the year ahead. We are determined to throw off those chains we’ve carried around with us for the previous eleven months, not including the ‘new me’ first month of the previous new year when we decide on the exact same unleashing … different set of chains but wrapped around us just as tightly.
At this time of year, there is no one who pokes at our social conscience, and shines a spotlight on our own failings, more than the master of the festive season himself, the ever increasing in popularity, Charles Dickens. Among the hallowed pages of ‘A Christmas Carol’ – with the loveable Tiny Tim Cratchit loitering briefly in the text as a symbol of hope with the words, ‘God bless us, every one,’ ringing out in a gesture of inclusive good tidings - we observe the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future illuminating the dark corners of old Ebenezer Scrooge’s life in an attempt to encourage him (and us) to throw off the heaviness of those inhibiting and restrictive chains, for the sake of himself and everyone around him.
But imagine if our own looming new year also came in the guise of a ghost from years to come appearing to us just before midnight on the final day of the year, reminding us of what we could do to prevent ourselves from having a proverbial ‘throwing ourselves under the bus’ moment in the new year ahead! Or the ghost of Christmas past came to remind us of the chains that we’d previously escaped from only to tie ourselves up again in them, once the pain of carrying around the previous chains had been erased from our thoughts!
Of course, we can’t change the past, but we can learn from it; we can follow up on a few of those missed opportunities that we wished we’d taken. Or attempt to revisit and rectify any lingering disastrous moments or soured relationships that lie there in our subconscious, buried, silently waiting to re-emerge to terrify or guilt trip us, or to shed light on the difficult path to forgiveness. And December always presents itself as the perfect month for us to begin the walk along that precarious track, chains trailing and rattling further and further behind us as they begin to loosen their grip of destructivity and start to allow our very precious existence to flow in new directions.
This process of liberation can also give rise to our inner voices vying for prime position for their most urgent message to be heard – a message which compels us to be brave and to use our time doing what we love, and to search for a reason for being … for our passion or ‘ikigai’, to assist us in the next page of our story.
‘You gotta do it honey, and you gotta do it yourself.’
‘You gotta do it honey, and you gotta do it yourself,’ echoes a voice from an old black and white movie in the depths of my brain, ‘no one else ain’t gonna do it for ya,’ the voice continues using a double negative and a Chicago accent … a voice which always works for me in its bluntness and clarity – no gun pointed against my head, just a plain old fictitious Chicago gangster giving it to me straight. Well, a gangster with a touch of Al Capone about him maybe!
Yes, there are always practical and emotional issues to navigate when we think we need to make changes. It’s not easy to just throw off our shackles and run through fields of wheat like a caricature of Teresa May knowing that it will one day, arguably, lead to great things … but even a tiny part of what we love to do is often enough of a seed to plant, and to eventually harvest into something much more aligned to what our own story should really look like, not a replica of someone else’s story, but our own unique piece of time travel.
At this time of year, among the hurriedness of trying to get everything organised alongside the resentment of the imposition of it all – bah humbug (it had to be said!), I’m reminded to slow down to allow the cathartic flow of memories, stories, and new beginnings to resurface in my own life, and from Christmases past.
Decorating our tree, always helps this flow. Each ornamental bauble we squeeze over the pine needles carries with it a reminder of a person or a place, or a particular Christmas … the homemade decorations our children and grandchildren made at school or at home which are falling apart but which still make it onto the tree, or the star shaped, hand painted decoration brought back from a trip abroad, or the beautiful handmade decorations from a talented family member, and others from friends. And this year, on the Christmas trees of two of our daughters, two ‘first Christmas’ baubles for our new grandsons to continue that story. While for some, the tree is all about that Instagram-able moment, it's the invisible content inside that moment that really brings the true meaning of Christmas for me … the content that recognises the change and growth that has slowly evolved over a lifetime.
But change has to start somewhere, and this Christmas marks ten years since we began a new family tradition … a simple but very special Christmas tablecloth - a plain, white sheet of fabric holding each family member’s hand painted Christmas image, signed, and dated: our own fabric of time, our past, present and future containing a wealth of memories, discussions, and decisions. And even though, in those ten years, time has taken away people, and will continue to do so, we still have their DNA, their story and their memory woven into this bundle of fabric, laid out every year as a reminder of Christmases past; a way of keeping them, and their impact on us, around our table.
This year in particular, with so much unbearable aggression and death in the world, and the feeling of helplessness that comes with it, we’re particularly grateful for these memories, for our table, and for the people with whom we are able to share a table.
All memories play an important part in the story of who we are and how we arrived at the place we’re at today. And when it’s time for our own rip in the great fabric of life, having our story memorialised by others, with all its tales of brave new ideas and brave new beginnings, will be proof that throwing off the shackles and constraints of those metaphorical strictures, and the patient and supportive healing of those physical ones, gave us the chance to weave our stories into the stories of others in the best way that we could, in the knowledge that we did it with a genuine passion, love, and commitment to ourselves and to a better life for those around us.
With love, peace and joy for the festive season, and to all brave new beginnings in the year ahead.
Thank you so much for your hearts and comments in 2023. I appreciate all the beautiful sentiments, but also that you’ve welcomed my words into your life in 2023. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!
PS part two of this festive newsletter will arrive in your inbox in January 2024 🙏🏼
Lovely thoughts written down. The table cloth is such a great idea! Look forward to more of your written down stuff in 2024
Loved that nugget of info about the Latin for ‘stricture’ and the perspective it provides for our new beginnings. Interesting how we end and begin the year by shedding those various limitations yet they find a way to creep back in. It shows the importance of those rituals (e.g. holiday traditions or welcoming a new season) that help us to reset. Looking forward to part 2!