Tradition before Christmas

Sometimes I wonder, maybe I’m silly? After all, I could do something pleasant or read a book now. But still, before Christmas, I clean the house, wash every corner, move furniture, tidy the drawers, clean the cabinets, give away unnecessary things, rearrange the fridge.

Sometimes I don’t know why, but I am just so taught: to clean up before the big holidays, both inside and outside. And it is in that sweeping and washing I feel a strange sacrality every year, and an unbroken connection with my own ancestry, who have also been washing and sweeping each corner of their homes, forever at the same time.

Feeling the smell in my living room of the curtains that I just washed, I now know that my aunts, my mom, and a lot of strangers women are doing the same, some without even thinking why they’re doing that while others looking at it very ritually.

I am proud of this tradition because it is not superstition to me but a very deliberate start to a new cycle where I feel the breath of hundreds of thousands of women looking critically at an already organized room and wondering what here to do more, is there no crumbs left on the carpet?

© Fortune, 2019