The devastation of missing pretty much all the social event traditions of 2020 was hitting me a little harder than usual when I wrote this somewhat-bitter post about canceling this year’s Holiday Stroll. Kira and I hadn’t missed one since we started strolling back around 2011. While I’ve done my best to make the most of 2020 as a year for resetting and clearing the entire deck of social activities, this one left me sadder than others. Maybe it was because I was hell-bent on making it happen in the face of all odds (going so far as to entertain a possible day trip on which I’d meet Kira on her lunch break and do a quick walk up Charles Street in half an hour then drive home). Maybe it was because I wanted to hold onto the one thing that might make us feel normal again. Maybe I just desperately missed a friend I haven’t seen since last winter. Instead, all I could do was recap our almost-decade-long archives of holiday strolls… or was it?
When seeking out a photo of me and Kira from last year’s stroll, I ended up back in the already-dusty vaults of folders that held pictures from early 2020, in the relative innocence of January and February, when most of us (with the notable exception of the fucking President) had no idea of what was about to happen to the world. As I opened up a few photos from a mid-January Boston weekend with Kira, I stumbled upon a group that I had never posted, from a snowy walk in the Public Garden ~ the original site of our very first Holiday Stroll. Suddenly I realized we had indeed done a Holiday Stroll in 2020 ~ it just came strikingly and unknowingly early.
And so, on this morning in December, when we might have been waking in Boston to the last day of our typical stroll, I’m assembling a virtual post to mark the crazy kind of time-warping enchantment required to move months in a year that has already stolen too much from us. I will go back in time, resurrecting a beautiful snowy weekend and transforming it into our annual Holiday Stroll through photographs and words, the way art can reform and reshape the world, conjuring what could have and maybe should have been, crafting a life that exists in the wondrously messy muck between a wish and a dream.
On our very first stroll, circa 2011, it was snowing as we headed out on that Saturday morning. Just a light snowfall ~ nothing like the foot-high blanket that transformed the entire park for these photos. On that first excursion, the snow was a welcome hint of the holidays.
Quite frankly, we had no idea what we were doing. I mean to say that we had no idea that it was the start of a tradition that would mark our holiday seasons from that point forward. Upon seeing the snow, and just being stupid and silly, I remarked that this would be our ‘Holiday Stroll’ as we descended the steps of our building. As amused and dismissive as ever, Kira just went with it, and by the time we made our way to the edge of the Boston Public Garden, a new tradition had been born.
On that fateful morning, the snow fell slowly and lightly. There wasn’t a single gust of wind, and while cold, the beauty of the scene gave everything a slightly cozy feel to it. We huddled together as we walked through the Public Garden. I’d just purchased a hat on the way – one that went over my ears and fastened around my chin, so I was actually quite toasty. Kira was on the hunt for some new gloves or mittens, so we hastened our pace beneath the barren willows.
We made our way out of the Garden and onto Charles Street. I knew of a Tibetan store there that would have some heavy and warm gloves and hats and scarves, and Charles Street was a quaint walk, especially during the holiday season. There, Kira found a pair of gray patterned gloves, knit in a heavy wool, and she sighed in grateful relief for the added warmth. We were back on the street doing a bit of window shopping, and that was pretty much the event of our first Holiday Stroll.
We didn’t know then that our little walk would lead to so many future strolls, or that they would become such planned and plotted extravaganzas. Looking back in subsequent years I would find myself simultaneously trying to recapture the simplicity of that first walk, while making each and every ensuing year that much better. A crazy losing battle of my mind, but that’s what holiday madness is all about.
One doesn’t realize an ‘annual’ tradition on the first or second try, though, so the next year when I suggested another ‘Holiday Stroll’ we still weren’t quite sure it would be a thing, but we did it, adding a few more stops, incorporating some dining and drinks along the way, and making it quite a merry and festive affair. That solidified the event, carving it into our friendship history.
By the third year, I’d developed an itinerary, right down to the minute, and expanded our stroll from Saturday to Sunday. There was too much fun to be had in limiting it to a single day or walk. As with many best-laid plans, that first itinerary blew up in my face. The weather was foul – an infuriating mix of rain and wind that rendered umbrellas trifling things – and the stores nearest the condo that I had planned on hitting first, at precisely 9:15 AM after a ten-minute breakfast stop at Cafe Madeleine, didn’t open until 11. Approximately 75% of the rest of that ridiculously-detailed itinerary went by the wayside, a valuable lesson I needed to learn the hard way.
It was also becoming clear to both Kira and myself that these strolls weren’t about the actual walk, or the shopping, or the dinner reservations we sometimes had to hurry to meet. It was about the in-between moments, the lulls that revealed a true friendship, when you could sit with someone in silence and have it mean more than any fancy, gussied-up dinner appointment.
At the end of each of our Holiday Stroll weekends, it wasn’t the actual walk I remembered, it was a little jewel of a moment with Kira…
…the brief pause in the lobby of the Lenox Hotel, where we sat by the fire and the Christmas tee, setting our bags down and letting our feet rest…
… the endless parade of dim sum in the heart of Chinatown, where we stopped on a whim of sustenance…
… the sweet potato pause in the middle of ‘The Man Who Came to Dinner’, wherein we would stop the movie and move our cozy party to the kitchen where we’d share a ‘Hot Sweet’ from the oven…
… the fragrant whiff of pine and fir as we passed an unexpected pop-up Christmas tree stand in the South End…
… the little Christmas markets that would suddenly appear as if by magic along our route…
… the ice skaters drifting by on the Frog Pond that made Kira insist on a questionable improvised ‘skate’ on the pond in the Public Garden…
… the Christmas trees suspended upside down from the vaunted heights of the Liberty Hotel, and the glass of holiday merriment in my hand as I waited for Kira to finish her work day next door…
… the bowl of steaming pho in a now-defunct restaurant along the endless stretch of Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge between Porter and Harvard Squares…
… the cups of hot chocolate we ordered as we ducked into a shop along Charles Street and the cold of the darkening evening crept into our bodies…
… those are the little things I remember when I think of our Holiday Strolls. Nothing extravagant or fancy, nothing exceptional or ground-breaking – just the simple camaraderie and companionship of a good friend in this precious pocket of the holiday season. We tucked into our time together as one would a favorite blanket on a blustery winter’s night.
And that is what I almost mourned this year, before remembering the stroll we took in January of 2020, when a Holiday Stroll would have been the furthest thing from our mind having just completed one. But it made for a tradition-saving episode that we can use as our Holiday Stroll 2020. Backwards, as so much of this year has been, and fitting all the more because of it.
In a way, this works out rather nicely. For the majority of our strolls, with the quaint and notable exception of our first, snow doesn’t usually play a big part in our holiday excursions. This year, we unknowingly made our trek through the snowy Boston Public Garden, site of so many happy times over the years, and kept our tradition intact, even if we didn’t realize it then.
Because we were strolling unawares, we also managed to recapture the simplicity and essence of that very first winter walk, when it was just two friends making their way through a snowy day.
The morning came with its own magic and enchantment too, like this Japanese lantern, something we don’t usually notice in the spring and summer, when blooms and buds draw focus to showier scenes. On that morning we paused and looked at each of its forest reliefs.
Without the hustle and bustle of the typical holiday time-frame, the Garden was largely uncrowded. The sun crept quietly into the day, joining us with its brilliance.
As cold as it was, the beauty of the day worked to warm us.
More than that, the companionship of a good friend worked its warming spell as well.
Unwittingly, we concluded our Holiday Stroll 2020 – about eleven months earlier than we usually do – and so I close this post with the hope that next year may return us to our typical trajectory in what will be our tenth anniversary of strolling together. Here’s to that future – and here’s to that January day of the past that enabled us to have this virtual stroll in a year when almost everything was lost.
