All is calm

#blog52 #week51

“All is calm, all is bright” – from Silent Night

I learned something this morning before I even got out of bed, while watching Good Morning America. Did you know that today is “Panic Saturday”? Also known as “Super Saturday,” the last Saturday before Christmas is apparently a major day of revenue for American retailers, marking the end of the shopping season that begins on Black Friday. Panic Saturday targets last-minute gift shoppers panicked that they’ve procrastinated too long, and is observed with one-day sales in an effort to accrue more revenue than any other day in the Christmas and holiday season. This year, it also falls conveniently on the day before Hannakuh, to maximize the profit potential of the intermingled interfaith values of generosity, guilt, and consumerism.

I can think of plenty of reasons for panic (climate crisis; current events in both India and China; every tweet that proceeds from the account of the President), but gift shopping is not currently one of them.

I do, however, have quite a bit of gift wrapping still to do….

After filling me in about Panic Saturday, the GMA anchors went on to let me know that the TSA expects 42 million people to go through checkpoints at US airports over the next few days, and that AAA anticipates more than 100 million travelers on the highways.

Places I’m grateful not to be today:

• Walmart, Target, Best Buy, etc. Does anyone go to malls anymore? If so, I’m also grateful not to be there.
• The airport
• The highway

I hit the grocery store and liquor store yesterday, so I decided to celebrate Panic Saturday in a revolutionary way: by not leaving the house all day. (Or more accurately, the yard. I made it to the mailbox and the chicken pen this afternoon.)

Staying home all day is a rare accomplishment for me. Even though I’m a full-time home-based teleworker, I almost always have an event to attend in the evening, or an errand to run on a quick lunch break, or both. As much as I talk about my efforts to be still and my need for solitude, it seems like I’m always on the go, rushing somewhere.

Not today. Peri, like me, spent the morning lounging and contemplating her plans for the rest of the day.

Turns out you can get a lot done without leaving bed. I actually did make one purchase — a new game to potentially replace our wildly inappropriate Christmas tradition of playing “Cards Against Humanity” with the (grown) children after dinner. Two clicks, and it’ll be at my door in a couple of days.

I also did some menu planning; found a new recipe for kale salad. A little blog-prep photo editing; a little reading. Maybe later this evening I’ll do some eating, drinking, and Netflix-watching in bed. And snuggling. No panicking, though. I’m taking the day off from that.

Newspaper, coffee, blanket. I may never leave the house.

Today is also the winter solstice: the shortest day; the longest night. When the Northern hemisphere of the earth is tilted the furthest from the sun. It’s overcast and rainy here today. We’re making our own light, with the help of the television, the iPad and the Christmas tree.

I learned something else this morning while lingering in bed, from Twitter, which led me to Google and Wikipedia, where I learned a little more.

Do you know about Shab-e Yalda (also known as Shab-e Chelleh)? It’s an Iranian festival celebrated on the longest and darkest night of the year. It originated as a Zoroastrian tradition, dating back to the 10th century. It’s still observed in Iran and several other Middle Eastern countries, as a time when friends and family gather to eat, drink and read poetry until after midnight. They eat fruits and nuts — especially red fruits like watermelon and pomegranates, because their color symbolizes the crimson hues of dawn and the glow of life.

Randomly, I had pomegranate seeds in the fridge.

Given my choice of holidays to celebrate, I’d take Shab-e Yalda (eating, drinking, reading poetry, friends and family) over Panic Saturday (bargain-hunting shopping) for sure.

But for now I’m so happy to be observing my own No-Panic Stay-at-Home Saturday, here with Allen and the dog and the Christmas tree. This could become a tradition.