Who holds you accountable to joy?
On Holiday Road Trips, Christmas Sweaters, and Spiraling Time
As I write this, I’m taking a quick sip of a Copernicus Vanilla Barrel-Aged Stout from Protagonist Beer—a little taste of North Carolina still lingering in my Brooklyn living room. I’m midway through my third attempt at finagling six strings of lights around what might be the girthiest tree we’ve ever had.
This pause in my Christmas tree decorating isn’t just about the tree or even the memories the ornaments hold. It’s about what these rituals mean in a season that so often rushes by. For my family, traditions like these hold us accountable to joy.
My wife, Amani, is upstairs giving our toddler, Nyah, a bath because—let’s be real—stringing the lights is one of the non-collaborative parts of this ritual. When she comes downstairs, still drying off from bath duty, she stops mid-step, shakes her head with a smile, and says, “Whoa, this tree is massive—and a good one.” I laugh: “Yeah, this might be the girthiest tree yet.”
But here’s the thing: the moment I felt struck to write wasn’t just about the tree or even the lights. I am feeling a deep sense of homecoming—both literal and emotional. It’s my first full day back in our Brooklyn apartment after three weeks away, and it’s also a homecoming to myself.
I feel myself grounding in the traditions that connect us to each other—alongside everyone else celebrating their own holiday rituals, finding presence in these shared moments. This collective power of presence deserves a pause. A moment of reverence. In that pause, I feel the weight of gratitude—not just for the rituals themselves, but for the way they bring me back to what matters most: family, community, and a sense of belonging.
And so let’s chat. This moment—stringing lights, sipping a seasonal stout, and debating whether I’ve underlit the top branches—is the punctuation mark on a much more complex stretch of grueling weeks out of town. Every Thanksgiving, we load up the car for our annual 10-12 hour drive from Brooklyn to Charlotte, North Carolina, to spend time with my brother and his family. This year marked the fifth trip south, a tradition that started during the pandemic right after my brother married his wife, who also happens to be my wife’s best childhood friend (because life works like that sometimes).
Our journey isn’t just a straight shot south and back north. It’s more like a spiral, an intentional pause that slows us down and grounds us before we reach our destination. Every year, we stop for a weekend in the Shenandoah Valley, giving ourselves permission to shed the urban, fast-paced production spirit and open ourselves up to the slower rhythm of the week ahead. This pause isn’t just a break from the road—it’s a grounding ritual of its own, a way to step into gratitude and presence before Thanksgiving even begins.
A week later, we’re back in Brooklyn, diving straight into the next part of the ritual: bringing home our own Christmas tree and decorating it with as much love (and swag) as we can muster.
Matching sweaters have become a staple of our Christmas-season style, but in true us fashion, they reflect both our personalities. My wife’s sweater is black, with the words “I don’t do matching sweaters” printed in cable-knit font. Mine, of course, is white and says, “But I do.” It’s a joy to then upgrade what are otherwise my sleepover-esque, hot-cocoa-colored thermal bottoms into an après-ski look with my black Chelsea boots and olive-green Canada Goose jacket—because who says holiday style can’t have a little edge?
And then there was Nyah. Let me tell you—our two-year-old had drip on a million. She wore her camel peacoat with a sage-green chunky sweater underneath, topped off with walnut-brown Chelsea boots that screamed Harlem Renaissance joy. On our way to the tree “farm,” she insisted on stopping to “strike a pose” on the stoop, like the style icon she already is. (By farm, I mean a three-minute drive we stretched into a one-hour adventure/photo shoot at our favorite Black-owned garden and plant shop, Natty Garden II, who hauls in fresh-cut North Carolina trees every year. Honestly, it might be less than a three-minute drive, because we didn’t even make it all the way through Aretha Franklin’s rendition of O Christmas Tree.)
Tomorrow morning, we’ll decorate the tree and sip decadent hot cocoa. We’ll hang many, many ornaments that tell the story of our family: a glazed Air Max 90 my friend Christie made for us in one of her last pottery classes, a really crappy Styrofoam-esque, glitter-covered Patriots helmet, a snowman skiing with a mask from Vermont, and even a black bear from Boone, North Carolina, where we helped my brother cut his tree last week. Each ornament is a snapshot of joy, a memory layered onto this spiral of time. And as we sip our cocoa tomorrow, surrounded by ornaments that tell our story, I’m reminded of how these traditions connect us—not just to each other, but to the rhythms of time itself.
Full-circle moments like these invite me to pause, reflect, and truly embody what I call living the future first. Decorating the tree wasn’t perfect—let’s be clear. I would’ve loved to get the lights perfectly strung on the first try because, duh. But instead of berating myself for being less than perfect, a conditioned tendency I am working thorugh shdedding, I gifted myself something radical: a break. I took a sip of that stout, stepped back, and let myself rest—not out of guilt, but because I deserved it.
This pause in my Christmas tree decorating isn’t just about the tree or even the memories the ornaments hold. It’s about what these rituals mean in a season that so often rushes by. For my family, traditions like these hold us accountable to joy. They remind us to pause, to notice, to ground ourselves in gratitude and presence as the year winds to a close.
The other lesson of liberation December holds for me right now is this: living the future first means using traditions to spiral back to myself. It means seeing time not as something linear or fleeting but as something we build with intention—layer by layer, ornament by ornament, menorah by menorah. Tomorrow morning, with a Motown Christmas vinyl spinning and hot chocolate steaming, we’ll lean into the best parts of being Millennial Moms™—hanging non-breakable, hand-crafted, cruelty-free felt ornaments, Montessori-chic treasures like blueberry pancakes, NYC taxi cabs, and hiking backpacks.
What about you?
What rituals or traditions bring you home to yourself this season? How do you find joy in the small, full-circle moments of the holidays? Drop a comment or subscribe—I’d love to hear your reflections.
