OK, before you read any further I just have to state for the record: I do not hate dinosaurs.

 

Really.

 

Just wanted to make that super clear.

 

Alrighty then.

 

In her book How to Celebrate Everything, Jenny Rosenstratch appeals to us to do just that: celebrate everything, create rituals, connect.  But as I paged through the book, I couldn’t help the wave of inadequacy that washed over me.  Celebrate everything, I worried?  I’m not even good at celebrating the stuff that gets printed on the calendar.  And as the days creep closer and closer to the holidays, I find myself sagging a little under the knowledge that soon my social media feed with be awash with people doing the holidays better than me.

 

Elf on the Shelf, Dinovember, school lunch bags hand-decorated with daily cartoons — it seems like so many of the things touted as magical for our kids is also a vehicle for displaying our awesome, creative styles as parents.  It may be just a byproduct, a way for us to connect when other forms of community are lacking in our lives, a way to share things when we live far away from people we love.  But when celebrating becomes about doing all this stuff — arranging dinosaurs for Dinovember, for example, I find myself cringing and asking meekly, ‘Do I have to?’

 

The answer is, of course, no, I don’t.  And neither do you.  Not if you don’t want to, not if the concept of Dinovember, or Elf on the Shelf, or lunch bag masterpieces doesn’t actively bring you a sense of contentment or joy at a job well done — if it’s all output and no input, for gosh sakes, don’t do it.  My own leery eyeballing of popular rituals and ongoing holiday activities has to do with exhaustion from the comparisons that are inherent anytime we post those rituals to social media.  Once a small, simple family pleasure becomes a scene to set, a right angle to capture, I’m tired just thinking about it.

 

Okay.  Grumps out of the way.  What, then, do we dino-hating (not really, see, I said so right up at the top!) Scrooges do?

 

Here’s what I did.  As I pondered Jenny’s book about everyday rituals, I realized my family does have those rituals.  I’m making a yearly Christmas quilt for my daughter.  We have a Family Feast on Christmas Eve, fancy, just us.  There’s taco night.  There’s our Sunday morning coffee outing. They aren’t Dinovembers, but they’re more us.

 

Do we celebrate them all actively, every time?  Is taco night a party?  No.  They aren’t Instagram moments.  But it is its own small pleasure, nothing to hashtag or memorialize so much as simply enjoy.  Should we enjoy one more avocado, make this bowl of guacamole a little bit fuller?  Yes please.  Fill ‘er up.  Happy sigh.  Next week might be the last for tomatoes from the garden.  You think?

 

Maybe it’s less about latching onto rituals for the sake of ritual, and instead all about finding the rituals that feel right to you, the ones that fold seamlessly into your lives just as they are.  Organic, simple, natural.  I don’t make a yearly quilt for my daughter because I feel compelled to do something yearly, to mark time, to build upon each year.  I do it because it feels right, like a project I want to hunker down on as the nights grow cold.  And the elegance of a fancy dress-up meal where we have to impress only ourselves is a treat.  We can dazzle ourselves and delight in our shortcomings, in the haircuts we didn’t get yet but need, skip pinchy shoes if we want, it’s just us.  Cozy fancy.

 

So maybe Jenny is onto something, after all.  “Families crave rituals,” she writes in the prologue.  But what rituals you crave and participate in should be what you want to do, not what you feel obligated or socially pressured into doing. Dinosaurs are rad, but how we enjoy their rad-ness is up to us.  So if the rituals that feel right to you aren’t full of misbehaving dinosaurs or a cheeky elf or school lunch bags decorated with elaborate daily art and wisdom…find what speaks to you, and feel no shame.  In this journey of ritual-making, no inadequacy is allowed.  Go forth and feel adequate.

 

(And if dinosaurs make you feel adequate and awesome, go do that. Go Dinovember it up.)