What is this impulse that never fails to strike me at the beginning of every new year? It’s not just for everyday tidying but for deeper-cleaning and reorganizing.
Of course, it stands to reason that a new year would cry out for better organization. Out with the old; in with the new. One more feeble attempt to control the environment. But I wish this desire wasn’t so strong. I don’t really want to spend time today figuring out a better place to store the waffle-maker, or decluttering the outside of the refrigerator.
So I’m fighting it the best way I know how. With words. Writing about the impulse to clean rather than actually doing it.
Let’s see how long this lasts!
(A Williamsburg shop in need of an 18th-century tidy-up.)
The ink isn’t dry yet on this new year. It’s still whatever we want it to be. A good time to write about it then. It absolves this blogger from writing about it tomorrow, also known as today.
Another reason to write: It’s a little too early to go to bed. One must spend at least a little time with this new year before closing eyes on it.
As 2026 begins, the Holy Year of Hope comes to an end. On January 6, Pope Leo will close the holy door of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, ending the observance that Pope Francis kicked off with these words: “In the heart of each person, hope dwells as the desire and expectation of good things to come, despite our not knowing what the future may bring.”
Not a bad way to begin 2026. May all new years be years of hope.
Today, we come to the last day of the year, a day that inspires both retrospection and awe. I’m thinking of the awe part right now. Of the fact that, in what seems like six or at the very most nine months time, an entire year has passed.
How to savor these days that pass so quickly, to empty them to the dregs, to leave behind the worries that cloud them. I turn to a book that made an impression when I read it early last year, enough of an impression that when asked my favorite book of 2025, this is the one I picked. (Weirdly, I don’t seem to have written about it here.)
In Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman reminds us that “the trouble with attempting to master your time, it turns out, is that time ends up mastering you.” It’s when we’re in a flow state, practicing our art, or caring for a newborn, that time drops away.
This isn’t some touchy-feely book about losing one’s self in the moment, though. Instead, it’s a cold-eyed look at how much time we really have, about 4,000 weeks, give or take a few.
This is a philosophical tract more than a “how to” book. When we accept the finiteness of our time on earth, we pick out a few important tasks and concentrate on them.
For some strange reason, I find this comforting — especially on the last day of a very full year.
These are days to savor, when holiday duties are mostly completed and holiday decorations mostly intact. We put up the tree 16 days ago so it’s still supple and green. In fact, we added new ornaments to it on Sunday.
This tree grew up on a sunny slope in southwestern Virginia. We bought it at a lot only 10 minutes drive from home. It’s been our fallback since the farm where we chopped down our tree for years became so busy that we had to wait in line to get into the place.
This tree is professionally cut and lovingly tended. (I can say this with confidence after meeting several members of the farm family that raised it.) It was lovingly, if hastily decorated. And now, it’s holding court. I sit in front of it to read, write and watch a movie on my laptop. It’s tree time!
Six days ago, on Christmas Eve, I woke up early and drove to Dulles Airport. I arrived with an empty car and left with a full one. Today, I did just the opposite.
Dulles was once again cheerful, aglow with holiday lights. But I approached it with that familiar thud in the heart that accompanies the leave-taking of loved ones.
We pulled up to the departures deck and I parked quickly, pulled out the luggage and hugged my daughter and son-in-law goodbye. I watched them as long as I could, until they vanished into the building that looks like it, too, is ready to take flight.
The boxes and bows are sorted and stowed away. I’ve found most of the teenage mutant ninja turtles that hid in my house after Christmas morning. The tsunami wave that is the holidays has peaked and begun to ebb.
What remains is the holiday table. The gathering of kinfolk around a roast or casserole, foods heavier than my usual fare but tasty and festive. Some of these meals have been eaten in chaos, while babies throw their cups on the floor and preschoolers pick at buttered noodles. But others have been nibbled in blissful adults-only configurations. I’ve enjoyed both of these arrangements!
I wish the holiday table would remain indefinitely. Luckily for my waistline, it does not.
Once again the days have passed, the splendid ones and the trying ones. Once again we’ve come back to this point, which is for me, and for many, the great pause. Christmas Eve. Christmas Day. Soon to be followed by New Year’s Day and the delicious week in between. Once again I’ll re-run this blog post, one I wrote in 2011. Merry Christmas!
12/24/11
Our old house has seen better days. The siding is dented, the walkway is cracked, the yard is muddy and tracked with Copper’s paw prints. Inside is one of the fullest and most aromatic trees we’ve ever chopped down. Cards line the mantel, the fridge is so full it takes ten minutes to find the cream cheese. Which is to say we are as ready as we will ever be. The family is gathering. I need to make one more trip to the grocery store.
This morning I thought about a scene from one of my favorite Christmas movies, one I hope we’ll have time to watch in the next few days. In “It’s a Wonderful Life,” Jimmy Stewart has just learned he faces bank fraud and prison, and as he comes home beside himself with worry, he grabs the knob of the banister in his old house — and it comes off in his hand. He is exasperated at this; it seems to represent his failures and shortcomings.
By the end of the movie, after he’s been visited by an angel, after his family and friends have rallied around him in an unprecedented way, after he’s had a chance to see what the world would have been like without him — he grabs the banister knob again. And once again, it comes off in his hand. But this time, he kisses it. The house is still cold and drafty and in need of repair. But it has been sanctified by friendship and love and solidarity.
Christmas doesn’t take away our problems. But it counters them with joy. It reminds us to appreciate the humble, familiar things that surround us every day, and to draw strength from the people we love. And surely there is a bit of the miraculous in that.
It’s been a warm and rewarding holiday season, time not just for writing (I finished a couple of projects recently) and buying gifts (I’m still wrapping them!) but also for Christmas magic, for concerts, films, singalongs and, on Sunday, a performance of the Nutcracker Ballet.
Not just any Nutcracker, but one performed by the same troupe Suzanne danced with. And I attended with Suzanne and her daughter, who’s almost the same age her mother was when she started class. A double treat.
There were the familiar tunes, in some cases even familiar costumes. After one dance, Suzanne whispered, “iI’s the same choreography!”
I took ballet class as an adult, and tap class not that long ago, so I understood the difficulty of the moves I saw before me. Not just the lifts, which never failed to win applause for the high-school-aged boys who executed them, but for the pirouettes, arabesques and countless other moves that happened throughout the program. For the strength and balance and grace they require and the beauty that results.
Human effort, set to music. Lights and laughter and applause. It was a very sweet Nutcracker indeed.
(Two of my companions from last year’s Nutcracker.)
I was driving south as the sun set on the shortest day of the year, which meant I couldn’t ogle the sky as much as I would have liked. I certainly couldn’t take a picture. But I did see on my left a sunset of rare beauty.
Unlike the one above, snapped seven years ago in Williamsburg, this one was primarily yellow-orange in hue. Crepuscular rays radiated from the horizon like spotlights. The afterglow was warm and radiant. It took my mind off the biting wind we’d had all day, off the shortness of the day itself.
Winter offers spectacular sunsets. If I better understood meteorology, I would know the scientific reason for this. Instead, I see it as a form of compensation. Winter owes us this, I think. It takes our light and tests our mettle, but if we pay attention, it offers revelatory moments. Last night’s solstice sunset was one of those.
“Where is human nature so weak as in a bookstore?” wrote Henry Ward Beecher. It’s a quotation I’ve always heeded. Even though I read voraciously, I generally stick with library books either in hard copy or online through the Libby app. Only when I’m absolutely positive that I must own the volume do I buy it, and usually online after some comparison book shopping.
Still, there are times when I venture out to a brick-and-mortar bookstore, which I’m glad still exists in my neighborhood. Yesterday I enriched Barnes and Noble considerably. I allow myself to buy books new and at full price only when I’m giving them away. One of these books was written by a friend and former colleague, and I’m glad to have helped her out.
Besides, you never know where the books you buy (or for that matter, the books you write) will land. Yesterday, while having coffee with friends, one of them whipped out a copy of Single File, a book I co-authored eons ago. It was at the beginning of my freelance career and I scarcely think about the book anymore, but there it was. My friend found it in her house while she was going through things. I signed it with a flourish and we all had a good laugh.
Meanwhile, the books I bought need to be wrapped. I’ll get to that soon.
