Holiday Spirit: How To Get It and Keep It

Anna

In the years past, we’ve always traveled to be with my family in St. Petersburg, but that’s not happening this year. How do you try to get festive when you really wish were you somewhere else? I started with peppermint mocha and flannel sheets, but that wasn’t working. So I decided to look back at what my family did when we were little and the first time since I was a kid, we got a real Christmas tree – yolka. We got grandma’s cross-stitched decorations out and added some tin-foiled mandarins. “When I grow up, will I have a beard like Santa?” – asked our five-year-old son. Maybe he, too, will have joyful memories of the holidays past, and this one will be one of them.

Elizaveta

Fake it till you make it is my eternal motto for the winter season and this year is no exception. There’s no use waiting for a miracle to happen, it’s time to put in some effort to make it real! Luckily, I’ve already come up with several ways to trick my inner skeptic. First things first, I paint my nails bright festive colors: this week I went for sparkling gold and silver, which remind me of tinsel lavishly hung in my dorm. 

When outer ornaments don’t help, I’m pretending to be a Christmas tree myself by wearing tiny candy sticks or reindeer earrings. Whether I stroll around the city or hunt for cookies at the nearest grocery store, Michael Buble and Dean Martin keep me company. They’re not very good listeners, but, oh my, let them sing! All these trifles are hardly visible for anyone but are just right enough to provoke the holiday spirit, empowering me to keep up with perpetual pre-holiday duties like buying presents or handing in work on time.

Marina

Ready or not, but it’s that time of the year again. So, let the hustle and bustle of pre-holiday shopping begin – and may the odds be ever in your favor! Just kidding, but you better hurry up (a friendly reminder for myself). We are just two weeks away from New Year, and I feel like I am turning into Grinch more and more every year – I miss the excitement of the holiday and not being responsible for all the festive vibes and food.

But as 'tis the season to be jolly, I do have a trick or two to get in the holiday spirit. There’s no better way to get festive than by cranking up some holiday classics like It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas, Baby, It's Cold Outside, or Let it Snow. Okay… so you’re still not feeling it? It’s time to bring out the big guns – make some hot chocolate, put on your warmest blanket, and start rewatching the holiday episodes of some all-time favorites like Friends, How I Met Your Mother, or Scrubs. A heart-warming atmosphere, a good laugh (or cry), and holiday vibes are guaranteed – and don’t forget to turn those fairy lights on to go all in.

Catherine

I am a simple human, so my secrets are no secrets at all: just give me some snow (or a cold winter night’s starlit sky), put The Nutcracker into my ears – and there I am, all enchanted by the winter magic. Top it off with mittens instead of gloves and a giant Baymax-style winter overcoat and my delight will simply have no limits. Perhaps this is not the holiday spirit per se, but does it really have a strict definition?

Another token of the season is signing and sending postcards to my friends around the world – thinking back to all of our shared moments of joy and hoping to multiply them in the coming year. Even if my day didn’t go as planned or I started at it with a uni assignment on my mind, as soon as I take the pen, only happiness remains. And as a New Year miracle, my handwriting turns into a string that brings us back together over continents and time zones.

Vadim

Something I've only recently discovered about myself is that the one thing that truly makes me feel like the holidays are coming are... advent calendars. I don't think I've had much experience with them in the past – maybe once or twice, as a curiosity sent by some distant relative from abroad – but they've just never been a holiday staple around these parts. And yet, there's something about a nice advent calendar that makes the last month of the year feel special. In 2020, the Year That Made Us Tired, getting to start every glum, cold December morning by popping open that cardboard window and discovering some tiny-yet-pleasing surprise has been a very uplifting experience. Or maybe it's all about the chance to exercise a little self-control and not tear the whole thing open from the get-go.

And there's just so many different ones now! Sure, you can go for the classic chocolate option, but if that's not your thing – go wild! Maybe you'll love the one that gives you a new flavor of tea to try in the morning. Or the one packed with Christmas tree decorations. Even LEGO is putting out its own advent calendars (would you just look at Darth Vader's little sweater? How adorable is that?). Heck, you can get a ready-made advent calendar frame and fill it up with whatever you like – or ask others to stock it for you. And it doesn't really matter that December is already halfway through. Let it count down to whichever day you like, or come up with a holiday of your own, for that matter!