Countdown to Christmas Calendar Day 17

Theme: Making Friends and Maintaining Friendships

December 17, 2025 – 8 days to Christmas

Today’s Story: One Step at a Time

For Rosie.

Céline had officially decided that life could take its unwanted diagnosis and kindly shove it into a snowdrift.

Preferably one a million miles from her little flat. Lourdes had turned itself into a Christmas snow globe: the Basilica glowing bright blue in the cold dusk, pilgrims queuing for crêpes near the Gave de Pau, the deep, dark river glittering with reflections of twinkling lights, and cafés steaming up their windows with the scent of café crème and sugar-dusted beignets.

Céline, however, was taking no part in any of it. She had been hibernating beneath an absurdly thick goose-down duvet for three days straight, cocooned in its protective warmth and, until a determined knock finally rattled her door.

“Open up,” Jean called.

“I’m not here,” Céline croaked from under her duvet.

“I can hear you not being here,” he replied. “Open the door.”

She cracked the door open an inch. Jean stood there wrapped in layers of wool, and the unshakeable smugness of someone who knew he was doing the right thing. Snowflakes melted on his beard, forming tiny rivers that made him look like a Saint Bernard who’d had a spiritual revelation.

Céline, horrified, stared at the shopping bag Jean had dropped on her kitchen table.

“No,” she said.

“Yes,” Jean replied, already unpacking: thermal base layers, waterproof shells, crampon-compatible boots and a sleeping bag rated to minus-twenty.

“I’m not going hiking.”

“Of course you are. It’s exactly what you need.”

“Jean, I have a medical—”

“I know. The doctor told you six weeks ago. You’ve spent those six weeks in this apartment Googling symptoms and stalking sad people on the internet who have the same diagnosis. Wasting precious time. Now we’re going to the mountains because I’m your friend and I’ve decided to kidnap you for your own good. Legally ambiguous, maybe, but morally sound.”

Céline looked at Jean—fifty-three, weathered by thirty years of guiding tourists up and down Pyrenean peaks. He wasn’t leaving. He’d stand there until she packed or until she called the police, and probably the police wouldn’t help, because he gave most of them their mountain rescue training.

“I’m not doing Christmas this year,” she said.

“Fine,” he said. “Then we’re going hiking.”

He shoved a thermos into her hands. It was warm. It smelled like hot chocolate. Dark, thick, sinful piping hot chocolate. She glared at it. He smirked.

“You monster,” she whispered.

Before she had time to rally her defences, they were on their way. The trail to the cabin was blanketed in fresh snow, the kind that squeaked underfoot. The Pyrenees loomed on all sides, their peaks slicing the pale sky with the sort of majestic indifference only mountains can pull off. Pines sighed under the latest snowfall, and the cold stung Céline’s cheeks, sharp and honest. Her breath puffed out in angry clouds. The air smelled of pine resin and something clean and new—like the world had been scrubbed with mint.

She wanted to be home. She wanted her duvet. She wanted the version of her life that existed before her doctor dropped this diagnosis into her lap like an anvil from a great height.

Instead, she came to the belated conclusion that her friend Jean, whom she had known for thirty years, was a lunatic.

Every few minutes, she caught him glancing at her—not with pity, but with a sort of practical attention, like he was checking the weather. She found that infuriatingly comforting.

They climbed for four hours. Jean didn’t talk about her diagnosis. Didn’t ask how she was feeling. Didn’t offer platitudes about staying positive or fighting through it. He just climbed, occasionally calling back practical things: “Watch that patch of ice,” “Use your poles here,” “See that ridge? That’s where we’re going. Yes, the one that looks a hundred miles away.”

“Why aren’t you asking me about it?” Céline said, finally.

“About what?”

“The diagnosis. What it means. How I’m feeling. All the things everyone else asks.”

Jean bit into his chocolate, considering. “Because I figured you’ll tell me when you want to. Also, because right now, it really doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t matter? Jean, my entire life just—”

“Your entire life is right here. This mountain. This moment. That ridge we’re climbing. The fact that your left crampon is slightly loose and you need to tighten it before we continue or you’ll twist your ankle.” He gestured at the vast landscape. “Everything else is just stories we tell ourselves.”

Céline wanted to argue. Wanted to explain that it wasn’t that simple, that fear and uncertainty weren’t things you could just out-hike. But her crampon was loose. And the next section of the trail required focus or she’d fall. And arguing with Jean was like arguing with a mountain goat—technically possible, but ultimately pointless.

She tightened her crampon. They kept climbing.

When they reached the top, the wind nearly blew them over. Below stretched a valley blanketed in white, a river frozen in thick, glassy swirls reflected the sky like a broken mirror.

Céline stopped. Her heartbeat—fast from the climb, fast from fear of her own future—slowed into something steadier.

“It’s beautiful,” she said quietly.

“Yes,” Jean said. “Stunningly so.”

She almost told him everything right there—about how terrified she was, how betrayed she felt by her own body, how every choice now tasted like uncertainty.

They reached the cabin by late afternoon on Christmas Eve. It was small, wooden, and crooked in the most charming way imaginable, like a house that had attempted to bow and gotten stuck halfway. Icicles hung like crystal daggers from the eaves.

Inside, the air was warmer than she expected, scented with woodsmoke and pine needles.

Jean hung a tiny string of battery-powered fairy lights above the window.

Céline raised an eyebrow. “Really? Outdoor gear, yes. Emergency supplies, yes. But fairy lights?”

“There’s more to me than meets the eye, you know, ” he chuckled.

They ate thick winter soup, sept légumes, that warmed her from the inside out, spreading heat into places that had felt cold long before the snow came. They tucked into wild boar sausages roasted over the open fire, warm bread, and homemade butter. Afterwards, he poured her a small cup of mulled wine. The scent of citrus peel and cinnamon filled the cabin. Each sip was a tiny Christmas hug.

The wind howled relentlessly outside, but the cabin held firm.

Céline lay in her sleeping bag, every muscle aching, and thought about the trail tomorrow. About placing one foot in front of the other. About how the present moment was the only moment that actually existed.

She slept better than she had in six weeks.

The next day, they left in darkness, headlamps cutting through the predawn cold. The trail was technical—crampons biting ice, hands on rock, exposure that made Céline’s stomach drop.

Jean climbed with the steady rhythm of someone who’d done this a thousand times. Céline followed, focused on nothing but the next handhold, the next step, the way her breath became ragged in the thin air.

The summit at sunrise: Céline stood atop Taillon, all 3,144 meters of it, part of the Monte Perdido range, watching the world below ignite. Wave after wave of peaks, their jagged crowns drenched in gold, pink, and the faint lavender of early dawn. Below, the Cirque de Gavarnie yawned wide beneath them—an immense, ice-armoured amphitheatre shimmering in the cold. Spain lay hazy and honey-coloured on the southern horizon; to the north, France dozed in shadowy blues, about to wake from the night. The world felt impossibly vast, utterly indifferent, and so heartbreakingly beautiful that her breath caught in her throat.

“Fifteen years ago,” Jean said, “I fell. Bad fall, shattered leg, three surgeries. Doctors said I’d never guide again. Maybe never climb properly again.”

Céline looked at him. He’d never mentioned this.

“I spent six months convinced my life was over. Everything I was—mountain guide, climber, the person people trusted to keep them safe—gone.” He gestured at the peaks around them. “Then a friend dragged me out here. Made me climb on crutches.”

“You got over it?”

“Eventually. Took two years. Different than before, harder in some ways, but I’m still here.” He turned to face her fully. “Your diagnosis—it’s changed things. I know. It’s scary. The future’s uncertain. But Céline, the future was always uncertain. We just pretended otherwise.”

“That’s supposed to be comforting?”

“Non. It’s supposed to be true.” He smiled. “You just climbed a mountain with a medical condition that terrifies you. You’ll climb other mountains—actual and metaphorical. Some days will be harder. Some days you’ll want to quit. But you know what? Just take it one step at a time. That’s all any of us can ever do.”

Jean produced wine he’d somehow packed, cheese, cold sausage, and a small chocolate bûche de Noël that had survived the journey slightly crushed but otherwise intact.

“Joyeux Noël,” he said, raising his tin cup.

“Merry Christmas. Thank you. For this. For not letting me disappear into the darkness.”

“De rien. Friends don’t let friends Google their symptoms ad infinitum, alone in empty flats.” He cut the bûche, handed her a piece. “Next year, we do the GR10. The whole thing. You, me, sixty days across the Pyrenees.”

“Jean, I don’t know if I can—”

“I know you don’t know. We plan it anyway. Make reservations. Buy maps. Give yourself something to train for.” He ate his chocolate.

They descended slowly, carefully, Céline’s legs trembling with exhaustion. She realised that this—this was how you lived with uncertainty. Not by conquering fear, but by continuing to climb, one step at a time, all the way to whatever summits remained.

The Making Friends and Maintaining Friendships Masterplan

The holiday season is the perfect time to reconnect with old friends. Life transitions often pull us in different directions, but that doesn’t mean the bond is lost. Sometimes, reaching out after years apart can feel like picking up right where you left off.

Think about someone you’ve lost touch with—a friend who once meant a lot to you. What would it feel like to reconnect? You might just reignite a friendship that brings new joy and comfort.

When a crisis makes you want to hide, call the friend who won’t let you—the one who’ll drag you out of your apartment and make you do something physical, challenging, and completely unrelated to your problem. Accept the metaphorical shopping bag on your kitchen table. Go on the hike, take the class, do the thing that forces you into your body and out of your head. Worst case scenario: You’re exhausted, slightly hypothermic, and still have the same problems you started with. Best case scenario: You discover that fear is just another mountain—terrifying but climbable if you focus on one step at a time, instead of the summit. Your friend who’s survived their own crisis shows you that strength isn’t fearlessness, it’s movement despite fear. You learn that the present moment—crampon on ice, breath in cold air, one foot then the other—is the only moment you can actually control, and that’s enough. You plan impossible future hikes because planning means believing in a future, and believing means you’ve already started climbing out of the place where fear wanted you to stay forever, small and safe and frozen, and you realize that summits—actual and metaphorical—are still possible, and the friend who wouldn’t let you hide becomes the person who taught you that living with uncertainty means living anyway, one foot in front of the other, all the way up.

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