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.

A Toast to Friendship

There is a particular quality to the light in December, a low, slanting gold that seems to paint the world in the colors of memory. It catches the dust motes dancing in a quiet living room and transports me, as surely as any machine, to a different time. I am suddenly in a crowded, noisy house, the air thick with the scent of roasting turkey, pine boughs, and a dozen different perfumes. My ears are filled with the glorious cacophony of a holiday party in full swing: the booming laugh of my old friend, Mark, the clink of glasses raised in a toast, the scratchy sound of a classic holiday record playing from the stereo. Our children, then small and dizzy with excitement, weaved through a forest of adult legs, their squeals of laughter a part of the music. Those nights were long, sleepless, and utterly wonderful. We were surrounded, enveloped in a warm, bustling press of family and friends.

For years, that was the heartbeat of our holidays, a beautiful, overwhelming symphony of togetherness. We never imagined the orchestra would ever grow quiet. But life, in its gentle, inexorable way, moves on. Our children grew, built their own lives, and quite rightly, wanted to create their own Christmas magic for our grandchildren. The guest list for our grand festivities slowly shifted. Friends, too, began to drift. Some moved to sunnier climes or closer to their own grandchildren, their addresses changing in our books. Others, more painfully, slipped into the quiet realm of memory, their faces now visiting only in dreams and old photographs. The big party became a smaller dinner, and then, for a year or two, a silence where the echo of that old laughter felt almost too loud to bear.

It is in this quieter chapter that we learn a new, profound lesson about friendship. The circle does not disappear; it changes shape. We learn to cherish the friends who have walked every mile with us, the ones who, though they may be miles away, are only a phone call from being present in spirit. A card in the mailbox, scrawled with a familiar hand, becomes a treasure. A scheduled video call, where we raise a cup of coffee to each other across the continents, becomes a new kind of toast. These connections are the steady, enduring embers from the great fire of our youth.

And then, there is the quiet, brave work of building new hearths. Friendship in our later years may not be the wild, spontaneous combustion of youth, but it is often a warmer, more deliberate flame. It is found in the shared nod of recognition with another grandparent at the school play. It is kindled over a cup of tea with a new neighbor, where we discover a shared love for birdwatching or old movies. It is the friendship that begins in a watercolor class or a volunteer shift at the local library, built not on the frantic energy of raising families, but on the shared ground of this specific, reflective season of life.

These new friends may not have known us when our hair was dark and our children were small, but they know us now. They understand the landscape of this time, the joy of having more time, the poignancy of missing those who are gone, the quiet satisfaction of a life fully lived. We create new traditions with them: a simple potluck supper instead of a grand party, a walk through the glittering neighborhood lights instead of a late-night gathering.

So, as this golden December light fades into evening, I raise my glass. Here is a toast to the friends of a lifetime, whose memories are woven into the very fabric of our holidays. We see your faces in the flickering of the fire, and we carry you in our hearts, always. And here is a toast, too, to the new friends, the brave and beautiful souls who are helping us write the next chapters of our story. You remind us that the heart has an endless capacity for expansion.

The circle may be different now, but it is no less warm. It is lit by the same spirit of love, laughter, and shared humanity that has always been the true magic of the season. Cheers to you all, near and far. You make every season brighter.