December 23, 2022 
“‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse,” is the famous line from the poem A Visit From Saint Nicholas, written by Clement Clarke Moore in 1823.
As an equestrian, you don’t need to read on to the visions of sugarplums and flying reindeer to know this poem is fantasy, or that Clement Clarke Moore evidently never had horses to look after on Christmas Eve.
For the past three years, my night went a little more like, “‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the farm, the horses were stirring the mats in their barn. Awaiting their hay and stamping their feet, while mice scamper the grain room for treats.”
Spending the night like this is something most grooms or horse owners will be able to relate, because horses don’t take holidays. They aren’t toys that you can wind up or down whenever is convenient. They’ll still demand breakfast at their usual 6:30 a.m. hour and whinny at you while you’re finishing the boxes because they’re eager to go outside. And no matter how many candy canes you bribe them with they don’t care that it’s Christmas. To them its business as usual.
After all, someone needs to turn-out Dasher and Dancer, and Prancer and Vixen too, right? Or tack them up to the sleigh after throwing them their snickerdoodle mash.
When I spent my first holiday season working in a stable away from home I thought I’d miss my silent night in Boston, with my feet tucked close to the radiator and the Elvis Christmas album droning on in the background. Yet there was something about waking to the Florida sun flooding my bedroom that stirred the serotonin in my brain and freed me from the familiar melancholic haze that was the snowy drive home from a relative’s house.
Striding into the barn like it was any old day meant there were no expectations. As someone who clings to the nostalgia borne of tradition, it was surprisingly liberating. Any break from history is something I’ve struggled since I was small enough to believe a pony might appear underneath the tree just because I scribbled it on construction paper in crayon. But like a river cuts into rock, time has a way of eroding tradition, as it only lasts as long as you can fight off the inevitability of change.
So, what’s the fix? How do you avoid the heaviness that sets in when aunt so and so is missing from the table? Or when work gets in the way of your family Christmas tree farm trip? Leave before you get left. Break the tradition before it breaks you. Healthy? Maybe not, but that’s why you throw horses into the equation.
When we arrived at the stable on Christmas Eve there were murmurings about a little tree, and who snuck into the barn to place it there. Sure enough, I came around the corner and there it was. About two feet tall, it was ominously perched on top of the table in the aisle, and nobody was taking credit for the potted gesture.
It elicited some nervous laughter and unease, because when the stalls are full of international show jumpers even the magical appearance of a Charlie Brown tree can unsettle your sense of security. How did they get in here overnight? What does it mean? Is it a pine veiled threat?
I was new to the team, so when I sent a photo to my mother who responded with “You got it!” and a little smiley face emoji, I thanked her for the act of kindness but dared not confess. She was back home in Boston and had ordered the delivery to the farm, no doubt with the assumption that I was homesick.
It reminded me of what I had nearly forgotten, it was Christmastime.
Eating acai bowls for lunch after a morning of hacking and grazing in the sun kept the thought in the back of my mind until then, and while I missed my family I felt lighter (albeit tanner). The secondary element was working with Europeans, namely Swedes, who celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve.
I realized this only after the fact. I just thought everyone was saying Merry Christmas because they were suddenly very in the spirit. When the 25th rolled around my bewilderment confounded, because to everyone else the holiday was already over, which made it feel even more like a regular day, but I digress.
We had organized Christmas, i.e. the 24th, so that we got all of our riding and turn-out done the first half of the day. Then the team, all of whom were away from their families, shared lunch after our boss returned from the grocery store with all he could carry. There were plastic wine flutes, turkey, vegetables, mashed potatoes, and some chocolate pie thing that turned into delicious sludge in the sun. We laughed, talked about the season ahead and took photos of the horses whose whose noses were curiously pointed at our table.
After years of working in the stable it’s nice to imagine being with my family in Boston for the holidays, but as the date draws closer it feels strangely bittersweet. Sure I’ve missed it, but I never experienced that overwhelming feeling of not being home for Christmas. I felt at home.
There is an old saying that you don’t get to pick your family, but in choosing a life with horses you get another one. What you share is something different from anyone else in the world, because it’s your world together.
