Plot Points #32 🎁
Elf on the Shelf, finger-knitting, feminist YA, and holiday parties
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Happy Friday!
It has been a wonderful, busy week, full of traditions like our annual Cookie Day with my grandmother, last-minute shopping, coffee with friends, and day-to-day prepping for my family to come over for our Christmas party this afternoon. (It’s amazing how much dust and gunk accumulates in a house with three kids, two adults, one dog, and a cat. 😩) Pierce and I started hosting last year and I love having my family over to celebrate. We eat, play White Elephant, drink lots of warm drinks, laugh, and take the afternoon slow. It’s my favorite part of the whole year.
Before I hurry off to shower and get started in the kitchen, I just want to thank you for being a part of The Nook community in 2023. I don’t pay much attention to Substack analytics, but I see how many of you open these emails when I go to write a new post on the dashboard, and it means more than I can say. Whatever way you show up—free, paid, or just lurking—I see you and appreciate you.
I pray your holiday weekend is a good one, friends.
Merry Christmas! 🎄
P.S. Thanks to my generous and amazing sister-in-law, THIS HAPPENED LAST SUNDAY 😍. Look at those seats! I’m still not over it. (You’re the best, Jo.)
Point #1: If I haven’t told you already, I *thoroughly dislike* Elf on the Shelf.
No shame to anyone who genuinely loves the work that goes into the daily Elf updates. You do you. But I tell you I cackled at the latest essay from
which manages to be both hilarious satire and serious analysis of the heavy pressure placed on parents of our generation to be all the things all the effing time: “Taken individually, none of these pressures are all that bad. But as part of a whole and in the context of an America that seems increasingly hostile to parents and children on a structural level, it feels like at every new stage of raising a small child, the way we’re supposed to do it is the way that sucks the most remaining life out of the parent.”Point #2: “Christmas is all about second chances.”
Everything
writes is an auto-read for me. The essay she penned on how our favorite Christmas characters teach us about the wonder of God With Us is beautiful and tender and the perfect cozy read with your favorite cuppa.Point #3: I made a scarf.
This week, I finally finished knitting an infinity scarf I started six whole-ass years ago. (I only ever pulled it out at Christmastime. Don’t ask me why 🤷♀️.) Now I’m trying my hand (no pun intended) at finger-knitting a blanket with all my leftover yarn. Hopefully, it won’t take me six more years to finish this one.
Point #4: Speaking of knitting…
This lovely piece from April Jaure explores the beauty and power of learning to do things ourselves. Like April, there are so many practical skills I’ve learned from motherhood and longing to live a more embodied life, and I think we can all benefit from her wisdom here: “Perhaps we need a return to our bodies — to reverently care for them with the nourishing food we make ourselves, or even grow ourselves. Maybe we need to learn how to build or sew, to quilt, bake, or plant. Maybe we can learn to tinker, make mistakes, and try again and figure it out. This way of living takes time, to be sure, but perhaps it is that vital, missing core that has been lying fallow within us for far too long.”
Word of the Week
Brontide: (n.) The low rumble of distant thunder.
Reading in The Nook
I’m neck-deep in a page-turner of a young adult novel called The Burning by Laura Bates.1 It’s the story of a teenage girl named Anna who moves from England to Scotland to escape intense bullying only to find her secrets have followed her there. While learning to adjust to a new school, Anna’s assigned a history project that leads her to discover she’s living in the four-hundred-year-old house of a woman who was accused of immorality and witchcraft in the seventeenth century. It’s a feminist tale of parallel double standards, and it’s both difficult to process and a little bit magical. (Which takes some talent!) I’m rooting for our heroines to see justice in the end 🤞🏻. (CW: Sexual bullying, harassment, and mentions of r*pe and abortion.)
I haven’t been much into holiday-themed books this Christmas, but I have a few at the library I want to pick up. I still need to finish The Holiday Swap by Maggie Knox because I randomly started it back in August, right around the time I had such terrible insomnia, and just never picked it up again. Perhaps I’ll get around to it after Christmas Day when none of us know what day it is and we’re all befuddled by feasts and gift-giving hangovers.
What are you reading this week? 👇🏼
“The son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God.”
—C.S. Lewis—
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Thanks for sharing Wendy! I always love your roundups :) I hope you and your family have a very Merry Christmas!