Every Day is a Holiday

My parents made the holidays so special. They showed their love to me and my sisters through their flood of gifts they gave us, but could barely afford; with parties of distant relatives we cherished and missed, yet rarely saw; with food that was festive and prepared solely on that holiday, served on heirloom china, saved just for that day.

Despite their special nature, I often felt lonely on those holidays. What should be the best day of the year often felt empty to me. What should have been received as an expression of love, was so tangled and riddled with expectation that I did not appreciate it with the appropriate gratitude. It is almost as if holiday expectation blinded me from the magic that befell my very eyes.

Later in life, on the farm and at the farmers markets, I found myself filling a similar role as my parents. I wanted the holidays to be special for all our beloved customers. To prepare for the historically busy holiday farmers markets we would slaughter, butcher, and prepare, quadruple the normal amount of product, with all the specialty cuts, hams, porchettas, turkeys, pâtés, and other meaty delights.

Just like parents on the night before Christmas, working through the night, frantically tying the last knots on every last gift for their children, we would also not sleep the night before the bustling holiday markets. We channeled some superhuman powers to prepare all the gorgeous, glistening, farm-fresh product, load the truck and get to market on time.

There would be a line down the block all day for our market booth, and often as we assisted folks with their festive orders of farm-smoked hams, house porchetta, sausage, dry-aged beef rib-eye, duck roulades, leg of lamb and the such, they would ask us, “what are you doing for your holiday?” To which we would respond, “We will be working”, then assert, “We keep asking the animals to give us the day off, but alas farm animals don’t celebrate holidays.” Every holiday, chores still need to be done: Cows milked, eggs gathered, animals fed, watered and bedded.

The truth is, and what I was more reluctant to say, is that preparing for those weekends, despite their splendor, was so soul-suckingly exhausting, that once the holiday came around, and the animal chores were done, I barely had the energy to order a pizza from the bed I was plastered to, sipping straight from a bottle of champagne no less, because it was, after all, a holiday.

Looking back on those many years, I have a bit of PTSD.

This has urged me to take a long hard look at holidays and the expectations and traditions tied to them. Instead of a knee-jerk response to this PTSD, and ignoring the holidays entirely, I have decided to only omit the expectation. And Instead, double down on the concept of celebration.

Living everyday as if it is worth celebrating adds so much value and meaning to my life. If a day cannot be celebrated, something in my life must change. Perhaps this is simply an excuse to enjoy the aforementioned champagne more frequently, or to indeed cook a grand feast each evening for my friends and family. But this deeply entrenched philosophy is exactly how we should live our lives. Live each day like it is special, live it so that if it were your last, you would not regret it.

Live life like every day is a holiday.