A New Tradition For an Old Year

By Sasha Graham

I love this time of year. The transition from the festivity of the holidays into the relative calm of January feels like a nice, deep breath. I enjoy putting all of the holiday photo cards we received in December into an album and I like how clean and neat the house looks after we’ve tucked the holiday decorations carefully into their boxes.

There is one thing I don’t much care for this time of year, however, and that’s New Year’s Eve. Although I’ve never really put my finger on why I don’t like New Year’s, I suppose it’s because it has always felt like a holiday infused with too many expectations and not enough substance. After all of the richness of Thanksgiving and Christmas, New Year’s seems a little empty to me.

This year, in mid-December, I sat on the couch drinking a cup of coffee while my 17-month-old son played with his trucks on the floor. “Probably not a bad idea to drink less coffee in 2007,” I thought inhaling the delicious aroma from my steaming cup. Then I grimaced, mulling over how to implement resolution #2, cutting back on caffeine, while still sticking to resolution #1, implementing an early-morning work-out regimen. Ugh. I found myself wondering, absent-mindedly, if my son would write New Year’s resolutions one day. “Oh, I hope not,” I thought to myself, “I really hope that he likes himself enough to not waste his time writing resolutions.”

Wait, WHAT?!

Do you ever find yourself having a thought that is so unexpected that it brings your brain screeching to a halt? A thought so startling that it feels almost like it came from somewhere else? Because that’s what happened to me...

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A New Tradition For An Old Year