Each year on Christmas eve we gather as a family around a candlelit nativity scene. We have envelopes, one per person, that contain pages where we each write and reflect on the year past and the year to come. This tradition has remained treasured despite a divergence of religious belief. When I opened and looked at my writing from last year, I found that I’d only written one and a half sentences. My partial sentence was “I hope I get to…” I think I intended to come back and finish the thought, but I must have been swept up in hosting my kids and grandchild.
This year I didn’t even try to write during the event. I was too distracted with getting extra papers and helping distract the toddler and with taking pictures. I was present in the moment, hosting rather than contemplating. It was the correct and joyful choice.
I took time on Christmas morning to open my envelope and have my moment of reflection. This coming year will be more of what last night was. I’m going to do a lot of joyful hosting, prepping, managing, and logistical planning. It is good work. Work I want to do, but if I don’t plan in advance to give myself time to pause, I won’t have any pauses. I will burn myself out on joyful work. I’ve had Christmases like that in the past, where I run myself ragged and to tears creating an experience for others while completely neglecting my own.
In some ways that is the story of my December as I haven’t done many of the year-end contemplative activities that help me ground myself for the coming year. I still need to create my collected book of blog and journal entries. I need to examine the priorities I set for myself last January and think through what priorities I want to use as guides in the year to come. I know that one of them needs to be “remember to pause.”
So I’m going to try to use this next week, the space between Christmas and New Year’s Day, as a pause. I will prepare for the New Year Launch event I’m hosting on January 2. I will stop and feel and think so that I can know what priorities are needed for my 2026.