We set up the Bedlam Tree last night, striking some simple LED lights on it, putting it by the front window. We plan on having a happy and meaningful Christmas this year, and that changes. For us, it will be a quiet day alone. My daughter usually comes up for Christmas but she can’t make it this year, so it will be me, Maria, some dogs, donkeys, a barn cat, chickens. This will be the first Christmas in memory without anyone from my family or Maria’s being around. And we aren’t going anywhere.

That feels a bit lonely, yet also quite beautiful and we love our farm and the idea of a quiet day together seems right. We often project the Norman Rockwell image of Christmas – the family gathered together for the feast. But I was reading Salman Rushdie’s powerful memoir, “Joseph Anton” ( that was the name he used in hiding for more than a decade) and he wrote that the Rockwell image is a myth, mostly. Family is often the dark chaos that runs beneath the surface of our lives, the pain and anguish that boils inside of us. I think there is something to that, as so many people seem to suffer through the holidays.

You can take the animal thing too far (at various points in my life, I have) and animals are not a substitute for humans for me – I often say the dogs are great, Maria is better – but even though I will miss my daughter,  I look forward to this Christmas. Red, Lenore and Frieda mean a lot to us, so do the donkeys. We are even coming to love our industrious chickens, who do no harm and work hard. It seems right we spend the day with them in our new home. We will walk dogs, commune with donkeys. If Christmas is about birth, it is also about rebirth, and the farm is a symbol of rebirth for us, of our lives together. I am excited about it. I will research some great Christmas meal to cook and think of some other simple ways to mark our own journey, the start of something powerful and new.