Ringing in a Bright New Year

 Wrapping up our December journey with warmth, laughter, and a hopeful wish for the year ahead.

When I look back on the New Year’s Eves of my childhood, I can still feel the thrill of staying up almost late enough to be considered a grown-up. I must have been around eleven when my parents began heading out with friends to celebrate, leaving me, the eldest, in charge of my brothers. I wore my sudden authority like a badge of honour, though my brothers weren’t convinced of it. Our shared goal was noble: make it to midnight and ring in the new year like champions.

Of course, most years our eyelids gave up the fight long before the clock did. It wasn’t until I was about fourteen that we finally managed to stay awake all the way to the magic moment. And when that long-awaited stroke of midnight arrived, we made sure the universe knew it.

We grabbed pots, pans, and whatever wooden spoons we could wrestle from the kitchen drawers and stormed out into the cold night air, banging and clanging with all the enthusiasm of a marching band that had never practiced a day in its life. We lived on a ten-acre plot with the house smack in the middle. Our nearest neighbour was two miles away, which was probably for the best, we certainly would have woken them, their livestock, and their ancestors.

There’s something wonderfully pure about the noise children make to celebrate a new beginning. It’s never polite or restrained. It’s joyful chaos. It’s hope in audible form.

Years later, when my own children were about the same age, my wife and I repeated the ritual, this time with actual neighbours close enough to hear us. And hear us they did. But instead of phoning in noise complaints, they simply came out with their own pots and spoons, laughing and cheering right alongside us. There we were, families ringing in the new year under a cold starlit sky, our breath puffing out in clouds as our children created a percussive symphony that surely startled a few birds awake.

My favourite New Year’s memory, though, happened at a party when my nephew was about two. My wife’s grandfather, well into his late sixties disappeared upstairs just before midnight. We assumed he had gone to grab a snack or escape the noise for a moment, as wise men sometimes do. But when the clock struck twelve, down he came, grinning from ear to ear, carrying my nephew like a prize turkey.

My nephew wore a glittery “Happy New Year” hat that was far too large, slipping over his eyes. But the real show was the diaper he wore, the current year written across it in sparkly letters, paired with a ribbon wrapped around him that read, simply and dramatically, “GOODBYE.” A symbolic gesture? A family tradition? Or just Grandpa’s sense of humour? Hard to say. But it was unforgettable. My nephew yawned through the whole spectacle, blissfully unaware that he had just become the ceremonial New Year baby.

As the years went by and I inched my way toward retirement, my midnight stamina… did not. I found myself circling back to those childhood days when staying up late felt like climbing Everest. At some point, I quietly decided that ringing in the new year at 10 p.m. counted just fine. Midnight is a suggestion, not a requirement. And let me tell you, toasting with sparkling cider at 10:00 feels every bit as festive. maybe more so, given that I’m still awake enough to enjoy it.

Whether you ring in the new year with a roar or a whisper, at midnight or two hours early, with pots and pans or a gentle clink of glasses, the beauty of this night is that it belongs to everyone. It doesn’t require a fancy outfit (unless you’re a toddler in a labelled diaper), a lavish party, or perfectly timed fireworks. All it needs is a moment, any moment, when you pause and think:

Here we go. A fresh start. Another chance. Another chapter.

And perhaps, just perhaps, a quiet gratitude for having made it through the old year, with its ups, its downs, and its puzzle-pieces-that-did-not-quite-fit. We carry our memories, our lessons, and our joys into the next year like little lanterns lighting our path forward.

As this December series comes to an end, I want to thank you for walking through the season with me, from stories of quiet moments to reflections on family, pets, traditions, and the gentle joys that brighten our days. I have loved writing these posts as much as I hope you’ve enjoyed reading them.

So, no matter how you celebrate the new year,  whether with noise, with nostalgia, or with a sensible bedtime, I wish you warmth, health, humour, and the happy surprises that life still has waiting for you.

Happy New Year to you and your family—may it be bright, kind, and full of joy.

Carrying the Christmas Spirit Forward

 Let’s take the best of Christmas, the kindness, the laughter, the love, into the New Year.

By the time the last of the wrapping paper has been stuffed into the recycling bin and the final crumbs of shortbread have mysteriously disappeared (I maintain they evaporate, but others insist I am the culprit), many of us begin to wonder: How do I carry this lovely feeling forward? The season has a way of wrapping us in soft light, warm music, and familiar scents, pine needles, cinnamon, and maybe that one candle we only light in December because it smells like “holiday cheer” mixed with “something burnt.”

But once January arrives, the world can feel a little plainer. The radio stations switch back to regular programming, the stores take down the garlands, and we reluctantly pack away the ornaments, promising ourselves we’ll remember which string of lights didn’t work this year. (We never do.)

And so, the question gently nudges us: Can we keep the Christmas spirit alive after the season fades?

It’s a lovely question, easy to ask, but harder to live out in March when the snow is grey and our patience for humanity begins to match the colour. Some of us, in a fit of optimism, tuck this intention into a New Year’s resolution. But as many of us know, resolutions tend to have the lifespan of a fruitcake at a family potluck, politely admired, rarely revisited.

Before you feel guilty, let me assure you: carrying the spirit of Christmas into the new year does not require grand gestures, excessive time, or a credit card bill that makes the bank raise an eyebrow. In fact, the quiet magic of Christmas resides in the small things.

Think about the sweetness of a simple “hello” exchanged in a checkout line in December. People seem a little more relaxed, a little more patient, and even the teenager bagging groceries cracks a smile when someone wishes him a good holiday. There’s a softness in the air, an unspoken agreement that we are all trying our best.

That softness is what we can carry.

Imagine this: it’s a chilly morning in February. You’re walking into your local café; shoulders hunched against the wind. You catch the eye of a stranger fumbling with their hat, and without thinking, you offer a warm smile. Suddenly the air feels just a little less cold. That’s the Christmas spirit, disguised in a winter coat.

Or picture the first week of April, nature waking up, birds singing, your neighbour once again mowing the lawn far too early in the day. You decide to phone an old friend, not because it’s a special occasion, but just to say, “I was thinking of you.” You can practically hear their heart lift through the phone. That, too, is the spirit of Christmas.

Maybe you’re driving in July, windows down, enjoying the breeze, feeling almost summery enough to forget about December altogether. A driver signals to merge. You pause, wave them in, and resist the instinct to mutter about everyone else’s apparent inability to read traffic signs. Congratulations, you’ve just performed a mid-year Christmas miracle.

And what about kindness toward ourselves? The holiday season is full of encouragement to be generous to others, but by mid-January, we often return to our old habit of being unreasonably hard on ourselves. What if we carried forward the gentleness, we offer others in December? What if we allowed ourselves rest without guilt, joy without justification, and mistakes without self-scolding?

Christmas, at its heart, is a celebration of hope. It’s that feeling we get when lights twinkle in a dark room, when we hear a familiar carol, or when someone unexpectedly hands us a piece of shortbread and says, “Go on, you deserve it.”

The good news? We don’t have to leave that feeling in December.

We can carry it in the way we open a door for someone, or in the patience we offer when a clerk asks, for the third time, “Did you find everything you were looking for today?” (You did not, but you answer kindly anyway.)
We carry it when we take a moment to say hello to the neighbour we usually wave at from a distance, or when we sit down with a friend over coffee and truly listen.
We carry it when we choose connection instead of rushing, patience instead of irritation, laughter instead of complaint.

Holiday decorations may come down, but kindness never needs storing in a box. The spirit of Christmas is not a season, it’s a practice. A habit of seeing the world with softer eyes and choosing compassion over convenience.

So, as the year turns, let’s keep the Christmas spirit alive in small ways. Let’s make it part of our everyday rhythm, one greeting, one smile, one kind deed at a time.

Hope doesn’t require snowflakes or jingling bells. Sometimes it looks like a friendly voice on the phone, a shared laugh over coffee, or a moment of unexpected patience on the road.

Carry the love and the laughter with you. Carry the kindness.
Keep the spirit alive.

From Christmas to New Year

A December Baby’s Window of Wonder

I’ve always believed those of us born in late December belong to a special club,  one with equal parts glitter, wrapping paper, and mild confusion. For those who share this curious birthday window with me, I send my warmest wishes. We December babies know what it means to grow up with one foot in Christmas and the other in our own personal celebration, even if, in those early years, the line between the two was a little… negotiable.

I wasn’t a Christmas baby exactly, but close enough that my early birthdays came wrapped in the scent of pine, the sound of jingling bells, and the unspoken family debate: Do we give him a Christmas present, a birthday present… or try to pass one gift off as both? As a child, I didn’t know these conversations were happening behind the scenes. I just knew that times were tight, kindness was abundant, and somehow, I always had something to unwrap,  whether it was under the tree or beside my cake.

And truly, I never felt deprived. I was too busy living inside the magic of the season. The house smelled like cinnamon, oranges, and woodsmoke. My mother hummed as she cooked. Snow dusted the windowpanes like powdered sugar. The lights on the tree cast warm glows across the living room that made every evening feel like a storybook. When you’re small, you don’t judge the size of the gifts,  you just enjoy the moment.

By the time I was older, and our circumstances were brighter, suddenly I was receiving two gifts, one for Christmas and one for my birthday,  and I felt like royalty. I still remember the thrill of seeing both a Christmas stocking and a wrapped birthday box sitting proudly on the table. I thought, Well, this is it. I’ve made it. In hindsight, it might have been the first moment I understood the idea of abundance,  how it sometimes arrives slowly, like the gradual lengthening of days after the winter solstice.

And now, all these years later, I find myself reflecting on this curious stretch of days between December 25th and January 1st. This gentle, quiet pocket of time that feels like a soft landing after the sparkle, but before the countdown. It’s a doorway of sorts,  a week where we let ourselves breathe, digest both turkey and emotions, loosen our shoulders, and listen to the faint hum of our own thoughts again.

This is the time when the house is a little quieter. The wrapping paper has finally been corralled into the recycling bin. The cookies are still within reach (dangerously so). The television seems permanently tuned to some marathon of old holiday movies. The lights still twinkle,  not with urgency now, but with a kind of gentle afterglow.

There’s a coziness that settles in. A slow exhale.

It’s the perfect moment for reflection.

Not the heavy, resolution-driven reflection that demands lists, charts, and promises we know we’ll break by mid-January. But the softer kind,  the kind that allows us to remember the year as it was. To honour its joys, its challenges, its surprises, and its quiet moments of grace.

For seniors especially, this time between Christmas and New Year carries a different rhythm. We’ve lived enough life to understand that time is precious, but also generous. We know that gratitude isn’t something you buy,  it’s something you notice. And there is so much to notice in these days:
the warmth of a blanket,
the sweetness of an unexpected phone call,
the echo of children’s laughter still hanging in the air,
the scent of pine lingering a little longer than expected.

And yes, there’s humour too. The kind that bubbles up when we find the ornament we meant to hang still sitting in the hallway, or we discover the TV remote wrapped in a dish towel for reasons that made sense at the time. Or when we catch ourselves eating leftover stuffing at 9 a.m. and think, Well, it’s still the holidays…

These in-between days remind us that joy doesn’t need ceremony. Sometimes it’s just a quiet afternoon with a cup of tea that smells faintly of cloves. Sometimes it’s a memory that rises like a warm breeze from years past. Sometimes it’s the knowledge that we’ve made it through another year,  no small feat,  and still have room for gratitude.

Hope grows here, too. Hope for gentler days. Hope for laughter that comes easily. Hope for continued health, for connection, for purpose, for moments that surprise us with their sweetness.

For those of us who were born near Christmas, these days feel like a second holiday in their own right,  a personal festival of gratitude and new beginnings. But even for those who weren’t, the week between Christmas and New Year invites everyone into the same warm, reflective glow.

So as December winds down, let’s savour these gentle days. Let’s appreciate the quiet, the memories, the leftover shortbread, and the soft promise of a fresh year waiting patiently just beyond the horizon.

Between the sparkle and the countdown, we find ourselves.
And that, at any age, is a beautiful gift.

Cozy Nights and New Traditions

It’s never too late to start a new holiday tradition.

There’s something about December evenings that invites a little dreaming. Maybe it’s the way the lights twinkle across a quiet room, or how the fire crackles just loudly enough to remind you that warmth is not only possible,  it’s right here. Or maybe it’s simply the fact that we finally slow down long enough to hear ourselves think. And sometimes what we think is, “Why on earth haven’t I started making my own Christmas candy?”

That was my thought this week,  unexpected and rather amusing, considering the last time I tried making candy I was twelve and the result glued itself permanently to my mother’s good saucepan. (She forgave me sometime around 1969.) But nostalgia is a powerful thing, especially at Christmas. And candy,  real, old-fashioned candy,  has a way of unlocking doorways in memory we didn’t even realize had been painted shut.

So let me take you on a little tour of the sweets that made my childhood holidays sparkle. If you grew up in the same era, you may just taste them again as you read.

There was rock candy, those glittering sugar crystals that looked like something you’d find in a cave guarded by elves. You’d hold one up to the light, mesmerized by its sparkle… right before crunching it into oblivion. And then the baby ribbons and pillows,  tiny works of art with swirls, stripes, and centres that surprised you every time. They felt so delicate you almost hated to eat them. Almost.

And who could forget the straws, chips, and waffles,  funny little shapes that made absolutely no sense, yet made perfect sense because they tasted like Christmas. You could pour a handful into your mittened hand, stand on the porch, and feel like you were feasting on pure winter magic.

Then there were the masterpieces: pinwheels, Cut Rock, and those intricate candies with tiny pictures inside,  flowers, holly berries, or scenes so detailed you needed to hold them close just to admire them. Someone, somewhere, had the steady hands and saintly patience to create those. Bless them.

And oh, the Divinity Candy. As a child, I thought heaven probably tasted exactly like that,  soft, cloud-like, and impossibly sweet. Then came the Gloria Mix, a bag full of mystery and delight, each piece a gamble you were thrilled to take. Add in Peppermint Sticks pushed down into the centre of fresh oranges,  an odd pairing on paper but an absolute masterpiece of flavour,  and you have yourself a full sensory symphony.

And of course, the royalty of Christmas candy:
• Ribbon Candy,  so thin and delicate you could snap it just by breathing on it.
• Marzipan,  little fruits crafted with such care you almost felt guilty biting into them. Almost.
• Old-Fashioned Fudge Trio,  because no one could agree on just one flavour.
• Butter Toffee,  the kind that threatened your dental work but was worth every risk.
• Chocolate Mints,  soft, elegant, and gone within twenty minutes of arriving in the house.

These weren’t just candies. They were moments,  tiny time capsules packed with laughter, wool sweaters, and the sound of relatives calling out, “Who ate all the ribbon candy?” (No one ever admitted it, but you know it was Uncle Joe.)

And now? Now I find myself longing for the fun of creating something sweet in my own kitchen. Not because I need more sugar in my life,  believe me, gravity is already working overtime,  but because the act itself feels like a gift. A new tradition, born out of old memories.

That’s the beautiful thing about being our age: we’ve lived enough life to know traditions aren’t fixed in stone. They’re meant to evolve, grow, adapt,  and even appear out of nowhere on a quiet December night when we suddenly decide that this year, we’re making candy. Or baking gingerbread. Or hosting a board-game night. Or starting a Christmas puzzle that will take until Easter to complete.

There is no rule that says traditions must be inherited. Some of the best are invented on a whim, with sticky fingers, warm hearts, and the soft hum of holiday music drifting in from the next room.

So if the fire is warm, and the lights are still twinkling, and you feel the smallest spark of inspiration,  why not follow it? Start small. A batch of fudge. A tray of toffee. Or, if you’re feeling especially brave, ribbon candy. (If you manage it, please send tips. Or samples.)

It’s never too late to begin something new. In fact, at this stage of life, new traditions feel a little like rock candy themselves,  unexpected, sparkling, and sweet in all the right ways.

So go ahead. Stir the pot. Try the recipe. Make the candy.
And let this be the year you gift yourself not only sweetness, but the joy of creating something brand new.

Because Christmas, at its heart, isn’t about age. It’s about wonder. And wonder, my friends, is delicious