Last year, I wrote this essay for a submission to a magazine to go along with Mary’s beautiful photographs of our Christmas tree bonfire. Although we ended up getting published on a photography site (go Mary!) the essay wasn’t right for that format – so I am sharing it with you here, now, as we descend on the beach tomorrow for 2014’s bonfire.

Living far away from home, you learn quickly that family is not just about blood. It comes in many shapes and forms, from people with whom you never expected to form such close bonds. When I moved to Southern California as a 22 year old, I took an adventurous leap forward: I had about $800, a boyfriend of less than two years, and hope. I followed him and his Hollywood dreams, steeling myself with the belief that I’d be able to find a home in the glamorous unknown that was Los Angeles.

Four years later, my hope proved true when that man took a leap of his own, in front of thirty of our friends, with a box, a ring, and the obvious question. We were at the ocean, our favorite place in the world, and as we watched the sun set over an orange sky, we were surrounded by our family – the kind that comes together as unconventionally as, say, a forest on a beach.

With origins in the Midwest, the Bible belt, New England, New Jersey, Sweden, and South America, and spanning cultural backgrounds from Italian to Cantonese; this is the family we rely on when we’re nearly 2,000 miles from the nearest true kin. We’re each others’ emergency contacts, champions, advocates, and shoulders to cry on. We bake the birthday cakes, mourn the job losses, throw housewarming parties for the tiniest apartments, rush each other to the hospital, and ensure that no one ever goes without champagne when we are promoted, get engaged, or close on our first home.

Like all families, we have traditions – from pumpkin carving to easter egg dyeing, yearly ski trips, Oscar screenings, and an annual gift exchange that, because of our New England roots, we refer to as a Yankee Swap. And, come January every year, we do the impossible: we head to our favorite home-away-from-home, the ocean, and we burn forty-some-odd Christmas trees to celebrate the new year.

Beaches are one of nature’s democratic forums. All kinds of people have flocked to them for centuries, to rest, to play, to enjoy the sun: to live and to breathe. The beach brings people together, as does another of our favorite pastimes: eating. When we gather at the State Beach, we bring snacks, marshmallows, chips, knives, cups, plates, tables, chocolate, lemonade, and always, always music.

Gathering around a bonfire once every January, we get to celebrate the new, put the old to rest, and as a family, we celebrate each other. We step outside our day to day, and have ourselves a good old fashioned party. The musicians of the group take song requests, the cooks make sure no one goes hungry, the writers tell us about the worlds they’ve been working on, and the photographers capture every moment; the sunsets, the s’mores, the moment when everyone hears that song that just came on and breaks into the chorus, belting out every word; the silence as the first tree goes up and we all stand in wonderment at the light coming from the branches and twigs.

This LA family, we are kindred spirits. We are a patchwork quilt of the world, and we love each other fiercely. Our family reunion to start the new year is another tradition in a long year of traditions that strengthens and sustains us.

This year, we headed to the State Beach, a place where hundreds gather every day, but where once every January, we congregate at the same spot, on the same day, on an unspoken sacred ground. It’s the place where we’ve celebrated friends gained and friends that have moved on, where we celebrate birthdays past, and now, where I’ll always be reminded of him on a knee in the sand. In a way, we came home. We burned the year’s loot, smiling in the warmth of the fire, watching the old disintegrate and preparing ourselves for the next year. We reminisced about the year past, and we talked of our hopes for 2013.

As we watched the trees going up one by one, we knew that we had everything we needed right there: a beautiful, unconventional, special family that come what may, will be here next year, in the same spot as always, burning Christmas trees. Our forest on the beach came together the same way we did; unexpectedly, perfectly.