FINDING MY LIGHT AT YULE

I found joy at Christmas after being the first to survive a rare form of lymphoma. And that joy has never left me.

I witness a lot of misery in December. And there’s cause. Just because it’s Christmas doesn’t mean the pain stops. Food doesn’t magically fill pantries. Our medical bills don’t get a seasonal comp. And the ache we feel from the loss of loved ones doesn’t ease. The chronic pain and neuropathy doesn’t get better because it’s Thanksgiving. My immune system doesn’t develop holiday spirit. And my battle with Covid in October continues to inflict and suppress as the enduring effects of the virus linger, making things harder.

When we don’t feel happy because the calendar page has flipped to December 1^st, we start thinking there’s something broken in us. We struggle enough during the year, then Christmas comes along and inflicts us with obligations and measures us for our charity and consideration.

Last night at Office Depot, I watched a dad play credit card poker while his young daughter looked on. Crayons. Sketch paper waited next to the register.

“Try this one.”
“Sorry. Declined.”
“How about this one?”
“Well… sorry. Declined.”

Finally, he divided portions among the various cards, separating what wasn’t more than fifteen dollars up on the fraction of credit he had left.

Christmas beat the man down. Not every kid will wake up to presents under a dusty plastic pine tree that their parents managed to buy at the thrift store. They struggled eleven months out of the year, and the pressures of a conventional and commercial Christmas will only humiliate them, adding to the devastating penalties of poverty, medical costs and outrageous interest rates on a lifetime of debt that will bury them in a mound of snow that will never melt.

I see it. I hear it. I know it. And I feel so grateful. I spent much of my adolescence in that world. Thanksgiving would come along, and my mom would just surrender, curl up into a ball, try to escape into a hospital bed, and I felt it was my responsibility to bring her a little Christmas cheer. It’s a role I’ve maintained into my adult life. I’m a storyteller, and the holidays are just another story to tell.

The expectations of Christmas defeated my mom by the end of November, especially after her parents died. I know she missed them. And it saddened me that I knew that she wanted to follow them. My mom had lost her connection to this world. Every Christmas, she told stories of the past, of a time of joy, of family that had faded beyond echo, and there wasn’t enough in this world to keep her here.

I wish I could share with her what I’ve learned. Christmas doesn’t need to feel like an obligation. You don’t need to adopt customs that bring you no joy. And you don’t have to go through all the motions to have a perfunctory holiday.

I know this well. There was a time in my life when I didn’t understand. Christmas was an obligation. It was commercialized. It was just pressure to spend money to buy gifts and put up plastic decorations and make crunchy chocolate chip cookies. And then it all changed when a malignant tumor grew under my ear in June when I was seventeen. Because of the rare type of lymphoma—an aggressive and often fatal type of blood cancer—it took a month to identify as ‘composite’ lymphoma. I do not exaggerate when I say chances were good that I had seen my last Christmas. By the time they did full body scans, they found malignant lymph nodes all down my spine. The cancer had taken over. It devoured me.

My radiation-oncologist, Doctor Giles McKenna at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, informed me that no case had ever been successfully treated before me and that the treatment he planned would torture me during the last months of my life. But he asked me if I wanted to try anyway. I told him yes. I had to. I couldn’t disappoint all the people in my life that were counting on a miracle.

And he was right about one thing: it was torture. I suffered toxic shock with every chemo treatment. And then I endured daily doses of radiation to the head, neck and chest. Radiation is a slow-burn, but it wrecked me worse than chemo. By the end of it, I weighed eighty pounds. I nearly needed a breathing tube because my throat had swollen almost shut. I couldn’t walk. And finally, towards the end of my treatment cycle, I went into the hospital for a month in early October. I wasn’t expected to survive to Samhain. And there were a few days when I nearly faded from this world. But then something clicked. The clock turned over. And on Halloween, they released me and declared me in remission. In a few weeks, they would scan again. We were cautiously optimistic, though the consensus that it was a temporary reprieve.

I didn’t know how to feel. I never prepared for survival. Indeed, I never prepared for anything. All I could do was endure the moment, take the suffering minute by minute and just try to get through to a time of relief.

When suffering is that intense, relief feels euphoric.

I was still shattered in November, but slowly, day by day, my tortured flesh recovered, cell by cell, mote by mote. My hair grew in curly. Walking got easier. After two weeks, my throat started to open. I even got some turkey down. Food tasted new, brilliant, so rich with flavor.

Everything felt new.

I didn’t trust life at first. I kept experience at arm’s length. But then they scanned again and found no relapse. Could it be true? Does my story have a different ending?

I got through Thanksgiving. And then in early December, we went to the Oxford Valley Mall in Langhorne, Pennsylvania. People still worshipped trade in great cathedrals called indoor malls in the mid-90s, before they turned into massive and cantankerous tombs, monuments to an era of rarified shopping. Temperatures still lingered in the average 30s, and snow usually covered the ground, often falling a little during the day to set the mood.

At first, the experience overwhelmed my senses, and I remember feeling faint, nearly passing out when I staggered out of the Macy’s into the central nexus and corridors. Giant wreaths hung from the ceiling scaffolding. Lights set the evergreen aglow with starlight. Snowy landscapes, Christmas trees and chimneys decorated the shop windows. People shopped, buying gifts to a live soundtrack of a choir and brass band singing traditional carols. It was busy, crowded, full of frustrated people, gaudy decorations and pressure to spend money—

And I loved every minute of it.

My dining room decorated for Yule.

All the lights sparkled like fireworks. The clarion carols sang just to me. And people pursued their holiday errands, dressed in winter hats and coats. I remember stopping in the corridor, needing a moment to collect myself after the initial intensity of the setting overloading my senses. It all felt so new, so crisp, real and piquant. I felt like a spaceman who came traveling, who had just landed and was seeing human Christmas for the first time.

Joy overwhelmed me—real, sharp, boiling joy. I even spun about. I often compare that time to Scrooge waking up on Christmas morning a new man, reformed and redeemed and so thrilled that he still had time to keep the holiday. My companions didn’t see it. They didn’t understand. They complained about the perfunctory commercialism, the general grouchy mood of the crowds, the lines in the stores. I saw those nuances too, and I loved even those elements. It meant I was alive. I was really alive.

It also meant I was different now. I didn’t understand it then, but I was going to slough many of those relationships. I wasn’t the same person. Tim had been burned away, burned down to my primal elements, down to my soul. Even my memories had been damaged by chemo. I didn’t own them anymore. My past felt more like a movie I had watched as a child and couldn’t quite recall. I wouldn’t understand all of this for another year or two. Eventually, I adopted the name Fox based on my totem spirit and the names I used online. That’s what people started calling me. Fox is the man who walked out of that inferno.

A week later, my mother took us over to my paternal grandmother’s house in Yardley. She always decorated for Christmas, put up this white tree decorated with blue lights. All my family came over. Dinner was served. Eggnog flowed. I just mused and stared at the blue glow of the tree. My tree still reflects that experience: blue and white lights, symbols of winter, of purity, of renewal. It’s all about the symbols and what they mean to you. The room teemed with love, community, family, and it would be the last time they ever all gathered. And it all felt new, like I was visiting the place for the first time. And that’s when it really hit me:

This wasn’t my last Christmas.

My basket of pomanders this year.

In time, I would come to celebrate Yule or the solstice. This is the basis for Christmas. For those of us who worship the nature-based faith, the year is a cycle of life. It is born, matures, marries, grows old and dies. Yule is celebrated in later December, based on the cycle of light and dark. The night of the solstice is the longest period of darkness for the year. Then the diurnal cycles begins anew as the day gets longer. This symbolizes birth, and this basic and rudimentary symbol has been added to over the centuries. But at its essence, it’s about birth, about the return of the light and a symbol of hope. Because we’re halfway out of the dark. The light returns. And in a few months, the winter will pass and purple crocuses will push up through the residual snow.

I felt born again.

So, here’s my point. I thank those readers that lasted to the take-home. After my near-death, I felt new. And I decided that instead of engaging in perfunctory customs that had been pushed on me for the holidays, that I would celebrate it in my own way. I would adopt those customs and traditions that both summoned joy and symbolized meaning to me. And that’s just what I’ve done. Think of it like a playlist that you fill only with Christmas songs that you enjoy. You don’t have to do anything that doesn’t bring you joy. If you just want to light a candle for Yule, then just do that. For me, I’m making the holiday about re-connecting to people in my life. I made special Yule cards for friends. If you are feeling lost, sad, burdened or struggling, use this time to give yourself a little care. Keep it simple. You aren’t going to be given the light. It’s not going to come in a box of plastic wreaths and cyborg reindeer (wouldn’t cyborg reindeer be cool, though?) And try not to let your burdens overwhelm you. Like I said, suffering doesn’t turn off because it’s December. But suffering never ends. That’s the mortal condition. But it can co-exist with joy.

Making pomanders at Square One Coffee in Lancaster. My fifth one!

Every year when I pack up my holiday decorations, I leave myself a note on the top of the container then seal it. It’s a message to myself to have faith, because when Christmas ends, I’m scared that it’s my last one. And there were a few times I was nearly right. I get scared. I even panic. I feel time passing, and I know it is fleeting. It’s good because it reminds me to cherish it, but sometimes I push too hard. I don’t experience it. I don’t enjoy it. So last year I wrote a note to remind myself to pause and enjoy it, so every day I have taken one nuance about the holiday, paused and just slowed myself down to experience it. I have done one each day. And still I struggle, but it’s also good because I don’t take it for granted. Every moment is precious to me, especially with my wife, Allison. I never expected to be alive at this time in my life, and every year is a gift. I have been blessed by her and her family, and I am so grateful.

My note to myself waiting for me in the box of Christmas decorations.

Doing my big cookie bake last week, listening to Christmas music, my eyes filled with tears. I listened to Christmas music over my headphones. My back ached. I was in such pain. Of course, I had overwhelmed myself with the job, and I wanted a pretty photo for Facebook full of colors and types of cookies. I started to cry because I felt so grateful to be here. Even in all the pain, with the medical bills, the constant threat of cancer, all the setbacks like covid, it didn’t matter. Because I was alive, and life is a gift. I am so grateful to be here and with my friends.

Joy isn’t the end of suffering. Joy is a force that helps us to endure the suffering. It exists side by side. And you have to seek it.

T. Fox Dunham

And if you’re doing well, if you have more, try giving a little away to others who do not—if even just a fraction, it’ll mean a lot to someone who has nothing. If we all gave a fraction, there would be so much. Toys 4 Tots still has bins. And the shelters will still need bread and eggs on the 26^th.

Our tree this year, white and blue just like my grandmother’s tree that night–symbolic of winter and yule.

Find the light your own way this Yule. And share the light with others, even if it’s just a few photons.

And could someone invent cyborg reindeer? I’m too busy writing, or I would.