It's the most liminal time of the year.

An essay on holiday nostalgia and some short fiction.

I want to take some time today to talk about the nostalgia that I and many others feel during the holiday season and why I think this time of the year is linked to liminality a lot more than others. 

You see nostalgia is one of three touchstones of liminality, where there's liminality there's nostalgia and vice versa. When you are a child, you still have that childlike wonder with the holidays, the dream of a perfect Christmas, or whatever you personally celebrate but as you get older those feelings may fade. You think back to a cold winter day, watching for black ice as you quickly make your way through a parking lot towards the grocery store. For some of you that sentence may have hit a place of nostalgia, you remember doing that with a loved one, maybe while Black Friday shopping, or on Christmas eve when you forgot to get presents, like you do every year.

You sense that nostalgia now as an adult, but just a few days later, specifically the week after Christmas, you may feel lost and without a cause, just floating through the days waiting for something new. That's because, in my opinion, those strange moments exist in the perfect middle space between what was and what will be, between last year and the next. Nobody is celebrating Christmas anymore and we still have some days until the New Year's celebration. It's the perfect liminal space, it's a doorway between time.

You spend those days longing for what was but scared for what will be, scared of what's next. Maybe you sit and stare at the last few red and green lights that dance around the neighborhood in a post-Christmas ballet, and you think. Think back to a time well spent with the toys you got as a kid, running with your friends for what felt like an endless amount of time, but what now? Now you walk towards the unknown, through the past and into the future. You leave your fear at the door, and you enjoy this new time, or at least you try, because at the end of the day all you really can do is try.

Below is a short piece, something I wrote when thinking of this exact same topic, it's a dream of sorts. Something I wrote at 5am while extremely sleep deprived. Give it a read, see if you relate and I hope everyone has a good holiday and a Happy New Year!

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Even the past doesn’t want me. 

   I wish I could go back, back to a time when these lights really meant something. When everything felt so special, so exciting and so magical, but even the past doesn’t want me. 

  A day spent in nothing but Pjs, warm and fuzzy, you’d sit impatiently waiting to open all of your presents with those you love ... but what now. Now, I sit alone in my car waiting for someone, for anyone to come and get me, but no one’s there. I’m all alone in this empty parking lot, Christmas lights illuminate the fog but there's just nothing. 

   Nothing here, nobody, not a single person, not even a sound. It’s an eerily empty atmosphere somewhere I’ve been before, though I just can’t place it. 

   I feel like I’m floating, like I’m in one of those chambers where all your senses are taken from you, what are those called again, oh forget it. See, the thing is I don’t really mind it, the feeling of floating in that empty space. It’s the freest I’ve ever felt, free from the monotony of everyday life, from my responsibilities, from my anxiety, from all my fear, I’m just free. 

   Sometimes I wish I could go back but, I know I can’t, because even the past doesn’t want me. 

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