It’s a traditional getting-back-to-business day, the return of work and school after holiday revelries. So why do I feel like doing nothing?
It’s simple. Holiday fun takes time to plan and execute. For all the wonder and excitement it generates, it don’t explode fully formed from out of nowhere. Presents must be purchased and wrapped. Dinners must be planned and served. Visits must be executed.
The chief planner/purchaser/wrapper/cook might be forgiven for wanting to do nothing more than curl up with a good book. Which may be exactly what she does … at least for an hour or two.
We’re more than 19 hours into 2025, a windy beginning to this new year with jets flying low over the house. They barely registered due to the din inside, as our large gang gathered.
There was a brunch with black-eyed peas and bagels, and then, after the cooking and eating and visiting, there was a piano to be played and a newspaper to be read.
That the first day be packed full seems in keeping with the general tenor of life these days, a life I’m grateful to have on this first day — and all the days — of the year.
(This was posted on 1/ 1, but due to a glitch in blog settings — now fixed — shows up as 1/2.)
“I gotta know what day it is,” says the character Murray in the film “A Thousand Clowns,” a favorite of mine. Murray is a truth-teller. He wants to own each day, “or else the years go right by and none of them belong to you.”
Murray tries to avoid the mind-numbing workaday world, where he sits on the subway staring out the window, not knowing whether it’s a Monday or a Wednesday, knowing only that it’s a work day. I know what he means; I’ve been there. But it’s also liberating to be so tangled up in holiday time that you have to remind yourself every morning what day it is.
That’s where I am now. From what I can tell, today is Saturday, but it feels like the fifth Saturday in a row, maybe even the sixth. It feels deliciously unmoored. The days seem more mine when I can’t name them, when they’re detached from any duties or associations, when they’re pure and unfiltered.
So here’s to the holidays, when a Friday feels like a Saturday and a Saturday feels like a Sunday. Here’s to time untethered.
One two-year-old I know peels the paper off her presents and then hands each to me. A preschooler removes every shred of paper but seems stymied by the box. A four-year-old looks with wonder at the rotating ballerina who pirouettes every time a music box is opened.
It’s the wonder of Christmas on young faces I’ve noticed most this year — with the usual variations based on age, temperament and nap times.
The elders have their own signature gift-opening techniques. Some ignore their presents, treating them as they might another candle on the birthday cake. Others gobble up the gifts, always ready for the next.
It’s the bounty of the season in bite-sized morsels — the best and sometimes the only — way to savor it.
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.
This year our Christmas tree needs a drink of water each morning and sometimes one at night. It’s not stalling at bedtime; it’s a genuine requirement. And I’m genuinely happy about it.
I’ve always known there’s a window of time in which to water a tree that if missed pretty much guarantees an early demise. Last year’s tree was neglected in those early hours and never recovered.
It’s hard not to see in this some lesson about needs and timing, that we apportion to the people and the causes in our life the sustenance they require when they require it. Easier done with a Christmas tree than less tangible entities. Still, I’m glad this tree is still thirsty days after it was decorated.
(Last year’s tree. If you’re quiet you might hear the needles dropping.)
The mid-month semester deadline is bearing down — two papers to submit and a final class — and I’ve barely begun Christmas shopping. Which means I’m clinging to the single-digit days of December for all they’re worth. The 9th feels comfortable, capacious even. Tomorrow, the jig will be up.
Why have we done this to December, clogged the month with so many to-dos: shopping and year-end appointments, card writing and holiday baking? Why have we taken a perfectly good, quiet month and turned it into a production?
We can blame Christmas, I suppose, and its Druidical forebears: the solstice, darkest days from which we seek solace and diversion. December is all about distractions, really. I’ll keep that in mind. It won’t help me check items off the list, but it may keep me sane.
For the most part, I consider Grandparents’ Day, which happened yesterday, to be a Hallmark holiday, something ginned up only for consumption value — cards, flowers, brunches out.
But my Grandparent’s Day was the real thing. It started the night before, when the four of ours who were sleeping over (thankfully, with their mothers) were running crazily through the house, doing headers off the coffee table, brandishing suction-cup arrows, and regaling us on the latest “Frozen” characters.
It included a laugh fest so long and so thorough that it reduced all of us to tears, and it continued with a sweet (and yes, early) morning, waking up to the sounds of little voices in the house.
In the four years since I’ve been a grandparent, I’ve marveled at how these kiddos change our perspective, test our resilience (how long can I pretend to be a mean tiger while crawling around on the trampoline?) and expand our imaginations. Most of all, my grandchildren remind me of youth, when all seemed possible. Because, for them, all still is.
The first day of a new year, this one with 366 days. A bonus day for a bonus year. The bonus day is because we have a Leap Year, but the bonus year?
The idea is this: If I think of it as a bonus, I’ll appreciate it more. I’m not ancient, but I’m old enough that this idea resonates. Even if I wasn’t, the bonus concept makes sense.
I’m just finishing The Book of Joy, a compilation of interviews between the Dalai Lama and the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu. One of the recommended “joy practices” is to make time each morning to set an intention for the day.
Today’s intention is to appreciate this new year as it’s dawning, and to live this new year as if it is a gift. Because it is.
