For the first time, Gretchen Rubin won’t be able to spend the holidays with her parents. It’s a refrain heard around the globe as people forgo traveling, and it comes with deep sadness. But Ms. Rubin, a happiness expert, says that stripping down the season to its basics opens a certain space to prioritize and preserve the “essence of the holidays.”
That might include cutting down a fragrant Christmas tree or creating platters of cookies. For Ms. Rubin, it means filling her home in New York City with paperwhite narcissus flowers. They evoke for her the iconic smell of the season – one that filled her childhood home in Kansas City, Missouri. “[The pandemic] is helping us realize how precious our traditions are and how much we do value them,” she says.