What is Actually Meant to Happen Between Christmas and New Year?

So seven days is a long time, it transpires

Did you all have a nice Christmas? Was there harmony and peace on Earth, or at least in your own little bubble? Nobody throw too big a tantrum about Santa not getting the memo about the iPhone7 or whatever? Good stuff. All done and dusted, and we don't need to worry about it for another 359 days.

Plenty turkey curry to go round?

My effort, made from scratch from the bizarre contents of the fridge and kitchen cupboards down here. Rather proud of the eventual nosh, actually.

Christmas being all but taken care of, it's now very nearly the end of the calendar year. A convenient little milestone to make us all get all reflective.

I couldn't work out whether I was going to write something all deep and serious and reflective, or something twee and superficial. So this might wind up being both. With no common narrative thread running through at all, just the inane rambling style that you've come to expect*.

I think I prefer New Year to Christmas. 

There, I said it.

As a Christian I'm supposed to like Christmas because of all the "yay, woop, Jesus" stuff. It's a good story right enough, but I've heard it a couple of times now. Kinda like that year when I had my theatre job over Panto season. The first once-through the story is good. After that you notice the extra subtleties, and after that you notice all odd little bits, like the ad-libbing and the forgetting the lines, and the times when the set breaks. By the twenty-something-th time you've stopped paying much attention to what the story's doing or who's behind who, you've zoned out a bit, and you've learned where the bits are when you can squeeze in a crafty nap in the back stalls** if it's a quiet show.

But New Year, that's a cool thing that you can run away and do with your friends, right? New Year is good. It's also possible that my enjoyment of New Year is a bit of a knee-jerk to the notion that we'll all spend Christmas with our own nuclear families, to the end that I haven't yet had a Christmas with L that happened on 25/12.

I like New Year, both on it's own terms and by comparison with Christmas, I like it. For as long as I've been old enough to remember, it's been a time of year that I have spent in Scotland, where we are lucky enough to have the wonder that is Hogmanay, an evening that is supposed to be so well celebrated that the state gives us two days off to recover. I enjoy all of the hope and well-wishing that goes with it. It's less complicated and therefore more sincere. Where Christmas has "I wish you a happy day of celebrating the birth of someone I believe in and you probably don't (and the associated, "but I really wish you would believe in him, it's rather nice" that wordlessly accompanies every Christian to non-Christian greeting, whether intended or not)", Hogmanay has the plain uncluttered "Happy New Year", which does what it says on the tin. Different number at the end of the date, clean slate, fresh start, good luck with it. Sorted. It also generally comes with fire, alcohol and getting to stay up late with the people you like. There are fewer assumptions about what you have to do for New Year. Stay home and watch telly till you want to go to bed. Stay home and sleep. Stay home with a few mates and some food, drink and crap board games. All options. Ceilidhs, street parties, fireworks. All options, and on the whole the ability to freely choose between them.

I think I just find it comes out really chilled and companionable, because that layer of expectations is gone. I'm now really looking forward to this next New Year in a way I didn't quite manage for the Christmas that just happened.

There might be board games. 

I like the looking forward that comes with a New Year. Crazy optimism about what we all might accomplish, or just generally have the chance to do.

Me, I have a small list. 

Yup, there's always a list. Really I just like the bullet-point format that blogger provides. It's a list of quasi-mini-resolutions (because I don't believe in real ones), and things I'm quite desperate to do once I'm back in my own world, and not walking around in my old teenage shows.

• Bake cookies and eat them when they're still warm.
• Work out exactly how many days it is until I next have some holidays booked.
• Go to the gym, because I am a very boring person and I enjoy it. TANGENT. This Is Not A New Year Resolution. Talking about going to the gym makes me awkward, because there is a guilt/indulgence/self-image/exercise-is-terrible thing that society does. The flip side of which is being in danger of coming across smug for mentioning that I do actually make it there quite often. I like it. It's somewhere where I can go for a run and not need to worry about stepping in dog crap or getting hailstoned on. I can go rowing get not get a wet bum***. There is a machine that provides just the right amount of counter-balance that I, feeble as I am, can manage a pull-up. I've mentioned this before, but one day I'll manage one unassisted, and will then be totally unbearable. END TANGENT, thank you. 
• Make Lasagne. I like lasagne very much. I regularly tell L that I like her more than lasagne, but only just.
• Make late night fried egg sandwiches.
• Get very excited about the things that are planned for this year. 
• Watch Christmas Telly. Because it's not actually all that terrible when you spread it out thinly enough. 
• Churn out a couple of those blog posts that I've been promising. The ones I've been promising you guys, and the ones that I've been promising me that I'll do. Like the house tour that will only happen after I've tidied my bedroom. 
• Watch Firefly, again****.
• See people, especially the ones I like the most.

I will no doubt add to this list, or remove things from it. I like lists anyway. And I like this one much better than a list of traditional "Resolutions". I like taking things up in mid-December, or February, just to piss of the imaginary New Year Resolution people in my head.

So if today is Tuesday (this has been written ahead of time and "scheduled" for Tuesday so it's a bit of a head twister what day it is) then you've got the rest of today and all of tomorrow to make 2014 less shitty. Like how the average age of the congregation plummets when L a I walk in, think averaging out all of the days of 2014. Make the last one awesome and that average day will be a tiny bit better. Me, I'm going to go see some people I'm very fond of, so I'll probably manage to up the overall score for the year. Off you go and make 2014 turn out ok.

And then 2015 will show up and we can start the year as we mean to go on; shipwrecked and comatose.

Happy New Year to you all!

* And yet you inexplicably keep reading it. I know this, I get the stats, you lovely things.
**It was warm and dark, and it was only once, and I'm sorry.
*** Most of the time.
**** Arg, Fox.