There was a time when I thought Boxing Day was the saddest day of the year. Scratch that: December 25, around 10am, was rhe saddest moment of the entire year because the presents had long been opened and now it was the longest possible stretch of time until it happens over again.
I mean, if it was a particularly awesome present like the ColecoVision I scored in 1983, that would stretch out the happiness a bit longer. But in most years, the feeling was not unlike what one NFL legend (Deion Sanders, I think) said he experienced the day after he’d finally achieved his lifelong goal of winning a Super Bowl title. At first it was exhilarating, but soon he realized that now he’d finally done what he’d dedicated his life to - but he still had two thirds to three quarters of that life left to live, for which he now needed a new purpose and motivation.
But with the passage of time, you realize that Christmas isn’t all about getting presents. It’s also about eating lots of chocolate.
Oh, and family and the birth of our Savior and stuff.
This year I finally managed to get back home to Newfoundland for Christmas, meeting up with relatives and friends I hadn’t seen in person for many years. And today, while seeing some local sights (specifically St. Phillips-Portugal Cove, just outside St. John's) it hit me that this interregnum week between Christmas and New Year's Day might be the best week of the whole year, because pretty much everyone is in a holding pattern for a few days. It feels like Saturday even if it’s (as I write this) Wednesday.
It helps if you have the week off, of course. (I’m self-employed, so I could take every week off if I wanted, and if I felt no need to eat nor keep the lights on.) If you’re in retail, the 26th and 27th (depending on when you open) are likely kind of crazy, though a step down from what you had to deal with on the 23rd and 24th. If you’re rushing to meet some end-of-year deadline, the week after Christmas might be the most painful period of the year.
In other workplaces, it’s probably like the day before the last day of school, when you have to be there but no real work is getting done.
Of course, the world doesn’t stop turning from December 25 to January 1. If you’re in Ukraine, it’s certainly not a week in which you can take it easy for a few days. We Canadians take for granted just how good we have it.
With all that throat-clearing out of the way, it's a week in which there’s no pressure to be “on” in your professional life. I have an automated response telling people emailing my office that I’m out until January 3. My work voice mail says the same thing, and isn't accepting messages. And I've told you guys not to expect anything new until 2023. (So “surprise!” I guess.)
I’ve barely been paying any attention to the news and leaving most of the newsletters in my email inbox remain unread. I haven’t even been on Reddit very much. And I feel better than at any other point in 2022.
You can’t shut out the world completely. Living in a bubble of ignorance is even worse than being very online 24/7. But everyone needs a few days in which they can say to the world, “if it’s still a problem next week, come back then.”
And here’s a truly incredible illustration of just how little this online nonsense means in the long run.
Someone compiled a long list of whatever topics dominated his Twitter feed throughout the year. Obviously, some of these events - especially Russia's invasion of Ukraine - remain extremely newsworthy. But go through this thread and marvel at just how many things dominated the conversation- and, chances are, made you extremely angry - a few months ago and which you'd completely forgotten about.
And then, when you feel your blood heating up in 2023, ask yourself if it will matter next week, never mind next year.