Hello, and welcome back to another break in the narrative. Hope you’re keeping well and are taking five to relax a little as the year winds down to a close. Since it is the season (the month is literally in the name of the novel!), I thought it’d be fitting to take a moment & ramble about a central theme of our story: the terrifying task of being alive during the holiday season.

Because I am a godless Russian (c), I do not celebrate Christmas – in fact, it was always somewhat alien to me outside of the cultural elements surrounding it, primarily gaged from movies and books. “Home Alone” and “A Christmas Carol” were a great entry point; “Die Hard” and “Polar Express” were instant favourites; “It’s a Wonderful Life” and (if you can believe it) “Rudolph” remained a mystery until my first ever Christmas celebration with a former girlfriend’s homestead a few years back. Rather, as is the case for many other Eastern Europeans, New Year’s Eve was the main holiday of December. Coincidentally, it was also my favourite, as it was the season of eating clementines, “Irony of Fate” on the telly, and huge (and I do mean huge) parties thrown by my parents for, seemingly, all the people in our life that would come together to set off fireworks and welcome the midnight. Oh, and, I suppose, the gifts were nice as well. 

Yet as I grew older, the parties became smaller, proportionally to the size of our own family, seemingly in tune with all of our friends (divorce is such a foreign concept when you’re young); the holiday spirit, so strong seemingly only a year ago, became more subdued (there is only so much joy to be found in seeing less and less snow with each passing year around this time); and the welcoming of the new year, so eager and inviting as a kid, became more of a formality. As I moved abroad, that spirit was further tamed when I learnt that few people really cared for the holiday at all. But in trying to keep the spirit alive, I found myself encountering a new sensation around this time of the year: overwhelming, all-consuming dread. Beyond the rush for gifts, making time to see people, and sending well-wishes, there was now the understandable-yet-unhelpful desire to look back on the year that’s gone by. And with each passing year, that task became more tenuous, more serious, and altogether more volitional, as I seek to prove that, on-balance, there is a genuine sense of progress.

Over the last two years, that task had become even more stressful. Despite the highs (getting into law school, making considerable progress to complete this little novel of mine, starting therapy, and some others), there are a few major regrets (not least of all, leaving New York and taking a step back from human rights-related work) that I simply cannot dismiss. Even as I steady myself, I feel, in many ways, that I continue to be adrift ever since I made the call to leave Europe for good; and as the world continues to move in a scarier direction with each passing week, that lack of an anchor remains a troubling thought to contend with, notwithstanding personal ambitions and goals.

Alright, alright, enough; these personal fears are for my therapist, not for you, my dear reader, to work through. But I do feel as if many of them can be related – quite explicitly – to the story I come here to write and you to read. Indeed, the holiday season is of intrinsic importance to the narrative of Decembrism. If you’d allow me to self-indulge – if only for a moment – in my writing, recall the opener of this story.

“Despite the feeling of impending doom that overtakes me every December, the night it all began started the same way so many others in my life did.”

Even as the narrative takes a drastic turn from simple dread, that feeling – as long as one acknowledged it, anyhow – is of monumental importance to me and to the story at large. Much of it, I’d like to think, stems from the desire for something more, something better, something greater than what is given. More than anything, it’s a fear of wasted potential, gone-by opportunities, and that god-awful taste of “what could’ve been.” And that insidious thought, one that really creeps up on you at the end of the year, is one that every character of this story is familiar with.

Still, as much as I would love to talk about every one of my characters (each, in one way or another, symbolizes different aspects of both me and the people I’ve met along the way), one character that really captures that spirit is Archie. When I first started writing, I really hated him: he was little more than an annoying know-it-all, smug and self-assured, a co-worker we all had once who makes the job last insufferably long, and an acquaintance who is a “tourist” in a cause that he had no reason to be in nor any appreciation for the stakes involved. Yet the more I wrote, the more I came to find common grounds with him: just as every other character here, he searches for a place or a thing to belong to; just as me, he wishes to defy the very path seemingly carved out for him for the sake of personal autonomy. In some sense, I even came to respect him for his choice to give up the opportunity of a lifetime (education in a certain prestigious institution I sense most of you can guess the name of) in favour of doing something “meaningful” and joining the organizing efforts on the streets. It is debatable, of course, if that truly is more “meaningful” – many choices one makes in their twenties seem to be larger in the moment, but not so much in retrospect – yet seeing as I myself am still in my twenties, where the magnitude of similar choices can be comprehended only so much, I digress.

Point is, the way I see him now, Archie would probably have the biggest concern about having done “enough” in a given year. It is scary starting something new; it is even scarier when you are not sure if you are cut out for it or if it’s an appropriate place for you to be in at all. And while it’s possible to mask – be it with humour, off-hand remarks, or smugness – a mask can only get you so far before some earnest – but, at the same time, kind and fair – reflection is in order. Whether this will work out for Archie, well, we’ll just have to wait and see how the story goes. All I’ll say for now is, perhaps, in retrospect, I should have been kinder to him – isn’t it funny how characters can grow with us?

But even if my characters are going through exceptionally tumultuous times, it does not make the predicament many of us find ourselves in any easier. The world is not in a good place right now, as I have expressed in the previous intermission; and end-of-year reflections are tough on a good day, let alone one where everything around is on fire. For it is a terror to contend with one’s accomplishments and failures, personal or professional, and attempt to figure out a vision for the road ahead; it is a terror to appreciate all the love lost and found around oneself, as the contact list grows larger yet the immediate circle of people to care about becomes smaller; it is a terror to be hopeful when all signs point in the opposite direction.

Put simply, it is a terror to be alive at the end of another year; and yet, alive we are.

Happy Holidays to you all. Stay safe and hug your loved ones when you can. May we all accomplish more in the next, better year.

See you in 2025,

– Daniel