My Favorite Time of Year

One question is inevitable when trying to understand the different personality types. What is your favorite time of year? Are you into the Spring when everything is born anew, or what about the Summer where fun in the sun is mandatory? There’s even a humbleness to those who look at the Fall or the Winter and paint a delicate picture of comfort in the surrounding shifts of weather. For the most part, there isn’t a wrong answer for any of this. In fact, it’s inevitable that one time of year resonates more with you than another. It’s the difference of season, the decision between Halloween and Christmas. These small things that give us reason to be grateful in a given year.

Though I suppose for me, the answer was always difficult to come by. I’m not naturally a festive person and the preparation for any of the central holidays has been cumbersome at times. While I’ve tried to escape this limited way of thinking in more recent years, there’s no denying that saying that I love Halloween is to feel inadequate because I don’t dress up my house. To say I like my birth month of July is even more tumultuous as it’s right next to Independence Day and the dreaded illegal fireworks that plague Southern California for a month straight. I would love Christmas, but it just doesn’t have enough sincerity baked into the chintzy cultural rehashing every year. The traditions are nice, but it’s all a bit too possessive of the markets.

No, to properly answer this question I give an answer that doesn’t come as often. My favorite time of year is actually the last week of the year: December 26-31. This is not because of some cynical “let’s get it over with” mentality, but more a sense of peace we all must come with in a given year. I’d argue with the hangover of Christmas cheer still baked in our souls, there is still that optimism that life will be okay. It’s a reminder that no matter the hardships, there is room to build anew. I see this time as a period where Americans should reflect on what has come and what will be on the horizon. It’s time to workshop those resolutions for New Year’s, to revive hope. This year is over and now it’s time to reflect on what we’ve made of it.

If anything, this week is the most cyclical of any holiday outside of birthdays. There is a constant need to be reminded of the journey that it took to get here. I think I’m attracted to it because I'm a writer who consistently looks at life as a narrative. Whereas the banner holidays feature conventions and tropes, there is nothing unified about the last week of the year. Nobody has co-opted it to have this meaningfulness. Maybe there’s some Post-Christmas sales, but it’s largely a time to finally open that present box and try out the new gizmo, to live with the relief of either a holiday done right or a holiday that’s ended. Frankly, some years the October-December run of holidays is exhausting and you just want to sit one out. It’s the calm at last, where your head is finally allowed to be cleared and nobody expects much of you.

With exception to New Year’s Eve, there’s really nothing exceptional about that final week. It’s mostly just anticipation and reminiscence butting heads one last time. It’s going to find magazines printing their “Best of the Year” lists and smiling over the many highs and lows. Some of them stick out as these moments you’ll tell your grandchildren, shocking them that you actually lived through it. Others will be these vague, forgotten anecdotes that are only remembered thanks to over-diligent journalists. Whatever it is, the year suddenly zooms out. It’s no longer about being stuck in the moment. If there’s an issue with Halloween or Christmas, it’s that they’re insular, so wrapped up in the spontaneity that there’s no sense of growth on the weeks before. They’re fun, but one doesn’t get to the end of it and is suddenly appalled that the time is over. They feel accomplished, but never because they’re better off than they were in February.

I will admit that this time frame also means that there’s as much joy as there is sadness. Not every year will be a stellar conversation for the scrapbook. Some years will bring death or loneliness, maybe even financial downturns. It’s likely that one may even experience despair. Whereas the other holidays measure themselves on affluence, the last week of a year doesn’t expect much of you. Maybe it will hurt those years where everything wrong went wrong, but something amazing happens to those who possess a little ounce of hope.

The same week a year later can appear better. Those inspired to improve themselves as the clock winds down may get to December 31 and be amazed that they have survived. Maybe they’ll never be as happy as they want, but trouble don’t last always. Something new will rise from its ashes and hope can begin to enter one’s life again. 

I think it works with the general sense that this time can correlate to a ticking clock metaphor in a very small way. Whereas most apply that to life stages, it’s easy to see a year as having that limited time. As Rent would say, there’s only 525,600 minutes. It seems so abundant when it starts, but by December 26, it’s suddenly a precious commodity. One cannot stop time. It will pass you by, and those hyper-aware of needing to achieve their goals will be more attentive during this time. Did you become a success or did you fail? Does it all matter? I think more than anything, it has a real moral of the story quality to it, as the final pages of this chapter of your life finally conclude with an end punctuation. There’s no shame in that being an ellipse, hopefully filling that void in January and the months to come.

Time is so precious that even to call my favorite time of year “the last week” is a misnomer. It’s incomplete, a mere six days to wrap everything up. For some, it’s just a continuation of Christmas. For others, it’s that relaxation period before things pick up again. Others are planning New Year’s Eve plans, but mostly it’s the most anticlimactic time of the year. Nobody expects you to collectively do anything. It is what you make of it.

I understand in theory that this is a logic that can be applied to the entire year. However, when viewed publicly, there’s acceptance on what one is told to achieve. Valentine’s Day is for lovers. St. Patrick’s Day and Cinco De Mayo are for social gatherings and festivities. Every holiday brings with it a lore and expectation that is undeniable. Not the week after Christmas. As much as December 25 comes with its own goals, it can be argued that it’s the happy ending to most people’s year. Everything after is a minor post-script for you to hand-write the well wishes.

This isn’t to say that it doesn’t all culminate sometimes in profundity of New Year’s Eve. Unlike the other holidays, there is more expectancy and less reward for it. For most people, it exists as an evening to either watch TV as the ball drops in New York or simply count down to midnight. Rarely has the mystique of one day passing into another been so celebrated, and I love it. There’s something so self-conscious about our awareness of time that makes me appreciate this moment above anything else. For 10 seconds of every year, we are unified and feel something spiritual. One year is gone. We are washed of the mistakes of the past and awarded the clean slate of the future. We’re all on the same page. Some may have more advantages than others, but we’re all starting the next chapter together. Young and old, poor and rich, happy and sad… we’re all together and for a few days we get to anticipate our own personal omens of how to start a year, to not curse things before they get too far along.

There is a finality to that last week of a year that I just love. What has happened has happened and we have no choice but to live with it. I love that unlike Halloween or Christmas, no two years have felt the same. Nothing has commercialized it in a way that doesn’t remove the joy that comes alongside the somber memorial paid to those past 52 weeks. I suppose I love it because it’s still kind of sad, like the end of something. The often cold weather leaves you bundled up, the overcast sky maybe affects your mood a little too much, but you’re still surviving. There’s a push to get to New Year’s, to see what lies on the other side. There’s a magic to it that’s undeniable, that we are experiencing our last memories here. Soon we’ll have to flip through those magazines and videos to find what our lives were. For now, they’re still ours.

I suppose to tear apart the symbolism and just embrace the artifice, I love this time for the same reason that cinema has. Along with classics like The Apartment (1960), I am drawn to the way that a year can creep on you suddenly or slowly. Maybe you’re in a crowd or alone, sitting in your apartment about to witness neighborhood fireworks go off as confetti drops from the sky. Given that I am attracted to late night pondering and this quiet peace that comes with it, there’s some sense that the world’s mentality has shifted with it. Whereas everyone may be too doped up on caffeine for Christmas, there’s the huddled simplicity for warmth, where everyone’s energy is more in preservation state. We’re self-reflecting as we wait, self-aware interminably to the act of time.

I think of the music that has come to define my New Year’s Eve. This includes Tom Waits’ phenomenal “New Year’s Eve” song which details his own drunken stumbling around trying to find meaning. It’s his typical vagrant insistency, but again you’re so focused on time shifting that it’s beautiful, that maybe we can start again. I also love Let’s Eat Grandma’s “New Year’s” song, which goes in an even more upbeat and optimistic direction. Of course, there is the aforementioned Rent song “Seasons of Love,” which manages to be that warm hug you need. You cry, you’re comforted, measuring your own year through these small details and realizing how great the mundanity of life is.

There is one more, but I’ll end with it instead of going on here.

Though of course, there is one moment in all of media that resonates the most to me about New Year’s Eve, and that is When Harry Met Sally… (1989). If what I’ve said holds only meaning, it’s present in the film’s pivotal finale where suddenly Harry makes a dashing effort to profess his love to Sally. The clock is ticking and there’s a sense of finality this time. After decades of knowing each other, this is the last chance to express your truest self. Go, go, go! And so he does, and it is one of the most tear-inducing moments of the year for me. Everyone is taken by their emotions and realizes that their defenses can’t work against time. They have no choice but to accept fate. There’s also a joke about “Auld Lang Syne” that is perfect Billy Crystal schtick to summarize things beautifully.

Speaking of, “Auld Lang Syne” is in simplest terms one of my favorite songs. You can take the entire Christmas catalog if it means I get to keep this one. The fact that we know to sing along together, starting a year with this complementary cup of kindness, is a tradition that actually feels special. To be there with someone at midnight singing this elegant melody just hits me the right way every year. It’s a culmination. You can perform “Jingle Bell Rock” anytime over November or December and it’s fine. “Auld Lang Syne” NEEDS to happen at 12:01 AM on January 1. It's mandatory. 

Do I love January 1 as well? Maybe not as much as the sense of an ending, but I still am attracted to what it symbolizes as potential. Everything is new. The Rose Parade is on TV with everyone thrilled to be starting another year. Many flock to football games and the first gatherings of the year. There’s often acceptance of people’s grogginess, their shortcomings as they reflect on the night before. It’s a fairly nostalgic day, but it’s also one where you’re mentally prepared to embrace uncertainty. It’s that mental leap that is unlike anything else. 

Soon a year will pass and December 26 will be upon us again. The cruelty of time is that we’re perpetually blindsided by December’s end. Taking a moment to appreciate what it means as well as what everything else in your life does is a powerful moment for me. It’s why even as everyone buys Halloween decorations or hot dogs for barbecues in July, I’m personally fine with the simple joy of a conversation with friends about what the year meant to them. Nobody expects anything from you. In some ways, time will take so much so quickly, and it’s amazing to recognize that happening in real time. There’s so much to love about every year, but what I love the most is stopping to notice that even when life is terrible, there’s usually something that made the past year meaningful. It may be small, but it’s there. One just has to stop and appreciate it.