The lights are my favourite thing about Christmas. (Being able to live off Quality Street and cheese for a week without any raised eyebrows is a close second.)
Filling your home with fairy lights - hanging on the tree, draped over mirrors and picture frames, winding like vines around lamp stands and banisters - is a small act of defiance against the dark; a way to reassure ourselves that winter will not defeat us, that we can still be joyful and unafraid, that even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise1. Christmas lights are hope, objectified, and I spend most of December taking comfort and solace in their glow2.
“Is it really spite that keeps you going?” someone asked me after I sent out my first newsletter last month, after I’d named this whole endeavour SPITE GEIST because I can’t resist a terrible pun. “Or is that just hope by another name?”
I get why he asked. It feels almost naïve to talk about hope these days, and a lot less Orphan Annie-ish to speak of anger and tenacity and spite as motivators and sustaining forces. Hope can feel passive and powerless, patiently waiting around for things to improve, placing our trust in the universe and in the goodness of others to actually make change happen. And hope, of course, can so often lead to disappointment.
But most of the time, it’s both hope and spite that get me out of bed in the morning. They aren’t a million miles apart, after all. For one thing, they both assume a future, and they both assume you’re going to be in it. (If you’ve ever experienced depression in any form, you’ll know that’s no small thing.) Sometimes they feed each other, or one picks up the slack while the other takes a break. Sometimes they work so closely in tandem they can feel like one entity with two aspects.
(I love Caitlin Seida’s poem ‘Hope Is Not A Bird, Emily, It’s A Sewer Rat’. For Seida, what I call spite is just the ugly, snarling, determined side of hope, and I much prefer her metaphor to the sweet little bird that inspired it.)
But what happens when you can’t find any hope, no matter how hard you try?
Christmas can be a tough time for all sorts of reasons, not least of which is our inescapable human tendency to carry out a brutal end-of-year performance review, to tot up our accomplishments for the year and flagellate ourselves for not doing enough, trying enough, being enough. What do we do if we find ourselves so wanting and our expectations for next year so lacking in hope that it seems pointless to try and create anything at all?
What happens when the long winter night has descended in your head, and life hasn’t handed you enough little lights to see you through till dawn?
For me, that’s where the spite comes in. That’s why I need it, and why I’m so thankful to have so much of it in me.
The way I see it, Hope and Spite aren’t singing birds or sewer rats; they’re sisters. They look similar, though you’d never get them confused. Hope may look a little tired around the eyes, but she’s always perfectly put together. Spite wears more eyeliner, and a ‘Fuck the Tories’ necklace, and smells like dirt brushed off yesterday’s clothes and a suspicious hint of lighter fluid. Hope is the straight-A golden child, who can always find a kind word to say and a sunny side to any situation. Spite ruins Christmas dinner by embarrassing Transphobic Uncle Trevor over the pudding and brandy butter.
They are both your allies, though they’ll help you in very different ways. When you’re stuck in the metaphorical dark cellar of despair, Hope will sit with you for as long as you want, hold your hand tightly and tell you everything will be OK. Spite will yank you to your feet, yell at you to stop whining and drag you out into the cold light of day.
(sometimes the sister you need isn’t the sister you want)
Hope will light candles and string up fairy lights to keep the dark at bay. Spite will hand you matches to burn the whole house to the ground.
(sometimes the sister you want isn’t the sister you need)
Having them both around, each reining in the less helpful impulses of the other, isn’t the worst way to keep yourself going through challenging times. If you’re really fortunate, Spite may only show up in emergencies, and Hope will be the one you get to spend most of your days with. (She’s much easier company, and she’ll let you have naps.)
The thing about Hope though, is that for some of us she can be a fair-weather friend. She’s not callous, far from it, but she’s a little fragile, only has a finite amount of fight in her, and when things get really bad she tends to panic and run away. She’s a ‘good vibes only’ kind of gal, is Hope, and when there are no good vibes to be found, she may eventually abandon you to go and look for some elsewhere.
Spite, though? She’s your ride or die. She may not wrap you in blankets or make you soup or have comforting words to say, but she’ll be there no matter what. She’s never discouraged or exhausted (though being in her company for too long can be exhausting). When Hope has packed her bags and fled, Spite will be the one pouring out the whisky, whacking up the volume on her ‘fuck the world’ Spotify playlist, and calling everyone who’s ever wronged you names that would make your nana blush.
And that’s why I say it’s spite, not hope, that keeps me going when no other motivator can cut it. Because spite belongs to me, in a way hope never will. Because I refuse to rely on something that can run out. That can abandon me. That can be taken from me.
(Emily Dickinson claims it ‘never stops at all’. Emily Dickinson can sod off.)
As an aspiring author, this year has offered me a lot of hope… then taken most of it away. It happens. Publishing’s a harsh and fickle business. Hope can be whittled down bit by bit with an email, a changed mind, a ‘not for me’, a ‘not this time’, an ‘I loved this, but…’. It can be worn away by reports, articles and tweets that say authors are earning less year on year, that marginalised voices aren’t making it through, that talk of access and diversity is nothing but hot air, that no one wants the kind of stuff you’re writing any more, that you missed your window, that the industry can’t sustain itself for much longer, that AI is about to render us all obsolete anyway, and on and on and on.
It’s a good thing Hope isn’t an only child, or I honestly think I might have thrown in the towel by now. In the face of all that, it would seem like the sensible thing to do.
But in the next newsletter I’ll be talking about beginnings. How we can pick ourselves up after failure or stagnation or disappointment, and get going on a new project even though the odds seem more stacked against us than they've ever been. How to find the bravery and the bollocks to start something new in a world where too many things are ending. Because I’m not willing to give up on my dreams yet - and I sincerely hope you aren’t either.
For now, I’m going to surround myself with friends and good books and stodgy beige food that Pat from Ghosts would approve of, and rest up before the fight begins anew. There aren’t many fairy lights in my head right now, but there are quite a lot in my living room, and for what’s left of this year, I think that will do.
But come January, I’m calling the scary sister.
Things I can’t shut up about…
It’s baltic out there, it’s dark by mid-afternoon brew time, and despite my teetering TBR pile of new releases, I feel the time has come to re-read Katherine Arden’s Winternight trilogy. It’s a magical, sweep-you-away story inspired by Russian folk tales, with a complex, determined heroine, a hot frost-god, and a Very Good Horse. I read all three books back-to-back a few winters ago, swiftly followed by Catherynne Valente’s Deathless and Naomi Novik’s Spinning Silver, and it was one of the best book-related decisions I’ve ever made. If you have some free time in those dead days between Christmas and New Year, buy/borrow all five, make yourself some good smoky tea, burrow under a duvet, and don’t emerge until you’ve read the lot.
I find it hard to focus on novel-writing in December, so I’ve been keeping myself busy doing a lot of baking. I even made my own cream cheese puff pastry for rugelach last week, which is borderline masochistic and about as easy to work with as glue. If you fancy making some Christmassy nibbly things that everyone will love, but you don’t have much time or energy to spare, Nigella’s cheese stars are ridiculously easy and dangerously moreish.
If you’re fed up with the usual parade of festive films, and Hallmark cringe doesn’t really do it for you, try Anna and the Apocalypse (currently on Prime) - a YA zombie Christmas musical (yes, really). It’s a lot of fun, the songs are catchy, and it’s a vast improvement on watching Elf for the 900th time.
I’m a big fan of Rowan, Rook and Decard games, and of Grant Howitt’s brilliantly silly one-page RPGs. If you’re looking for a seasonally-appropriate oneshot, try A Very Northern Christmas, in which you all play multiple Seans Bean - including Sharpe Bean, Spy Bean and Shakespearean Bean - and work together to complete production on a Christmas film while doing your level best not to die (as Seans Bean are wont to do). Sheffield accents and multiple uses of the word ‘bastard’ are, of course, a must.
Wishing you a peaceful Christmas, however you choose to celebrate it.
Until next time, goblin pals,
Gemma x
If you’re singing, ‘They will live again in freedom in the garden of the Lord…’ in your head right now, you’re my kind of person.
No flashing or twinkling settings, mind - I’m not some sort of deviant.