The Christmas Twist: Your Life is the Gift

Given my kids’ love of scooting and tree-climbing, I’m pleasantly surprised that they, along with my husband and I, are reveling these longer nights, relaxing and playing within our home.

As we approach the official start of winter on the Winter Equinox (December 21), we enter into a season that has historically been associated with less work and production. Most populations patterned their lives agriculturally before the Industrial Revolution so winter, with its colder temperatures and fewer hours of sunlight, was a time to break from our labors. Crops couldn’t grow under a blanket of snow and even the animals hibernated so it made sense for humans to do so as well.

In our modern day however, many of us are still expected to keep our usual work schedules and even put in more hours to meet year-end deadlines or prepare for holiday festivities.

At the same time (or even more so), it seems like the perfect season to reflect upon what the authors of these three hit books within the past few years: How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving, and Rest Is Resistance are rousing readers to do to restore our humanity: break the link between our innate value and what we produce.