I’d checked the weather. 45° F. Easy. I threw on a chunky denim jacket I bought years ago at a Scotch & Soda in San Francisco, wrapped on a scarf I’d just picked up at the Chicago Huckberry opening, and ignored doing my hair in lieu of a hat that reads Passin Thru. Ready for the Christkindlmarket.
The temperature was actually 25° F. Turns out I was looking at the wrong city in my weather app. Travel brain.
My wife, Kwell, and I didn’t talk much on the eighteen minute walk over to market. The cold does that. Strips conversation down to essentials. You save your breath. You keep moving. You think. Winter has a way of leveling things in the city. Doesn’t matter who you are, what you do. Once it’s cold enough, everyone shares the same number one priority. Stay warm. There’s something quietly connective about it. No eye contact required. Just a mutual understanding carried in silence.
The market was doing what markets do. Twinkle lights strung overhead. Steam rising from mugs. Music floating somewhere between cheerful and nostalgic. People clustered together, lined up to go ice skating or get a hot chocolate, and in some areas, just clustered together. Not necessarily to buy anything, but to stand near each other. To be part of it. I felt exposed. Small. Two layers shy of being properly dressed. My hat started to feel less like a slogan and more like a diagnosis. “Don’t worry about that pale shivering freak, he’s just Passin Thru.” Passing through this moment. This weekend. This year. Maybe more than that.
I have this instinct at the end of a year to look backward. To audit. To replay. But the cold doesn’t really allow for that kind of mental multitasking. It keeps you right where you are. Present. Slightly uncomfortable. Alive.
The vendors were lined up. I bought a nutcracker. Three inches tall. Over a hundred dollars. I didn’t ask questions. Was it hand-carved in Germany by someone who learned the craft from their grandfather? Or was it an aggressively festive tchotchke with a flimsy backstory? I genuinely don’t know. I genuinely don’t care. It felt right in the moment. Sometimes that’s enough.
We ate pierogis. Bought foreign candy we couldn’t pronounce. Lingered longer than planned because leaving meant facing the walk back. We ended up Ubering home.
And that’s the thing about the holidays. The magic doesn’t show up without a little friction. Without the metaphoric cold. Without awkward comments from uncles. Without overpaying for a nutcracker because you were too frozen to care. The discomfort isn’t a bug. It’s part of the holiday formula.
The holidays ask something of you. Patience. Presence. Persistence and pliability. A willingness to lean into the messy parts. Because the messy bits are also the deeply human parts.
Walking through the Christkindlmarket, underdressed, slightly annoyed, and very aware of the calendar flipping soon, it hit me. We don’t stop time. We don’t “solve” the year before the next one begins. We just move through it.
We’re all just passin thru. And the cold, the chaos, the mistakes, they aren’t our enemies. They slow it all down. The holidays, the chaos, the end of the year, they don’t ask for reflection. They demand presence.
