Celebrating The New Year

                         _                
New Year's Eve celebrations are a paradox.
It's deeply counter intuitive to try to take
advantage of a new year as an opportunity
for a new start by indulging the night before
in behavior which insures your new start
starts with a hangover guaranteed to rob you
of the initiative needed for change.

The problem is that the new year comes in
the midst of winter.  Balanced against our
desire for a fresh start lies the role the
holidays play in getting us through the winter.

The winter is the toughest part of the year
for an animal such as a human being.  There
is too little light.  The sun falls early, often
pulling our spirits down too.  The cold
numbs our capacity for sensual enjoyment,
and our physical natures can't forget that
which - given modern heating systems - we
intellectually forget: against the cold,
survival is a struggle.

But before the holidays, winter is enlivened
by the prospect of their coming.  Magic's
in the air.  Snow's romantic when tied
to Christmas.  People brave the cold to
keep wearing clothing with a bit of
erotic charm; holiday lights enchant the
darkness; and the coming celebrations
generally enliven the growing gloom of the
natural world.

After the holidays, winter's long and dreary. 
It must just be gotten through until Spring
returns, mixing memory with desire to bring
us the cruel joys of April.

The passing of the holidays can be very
depressing indeed, and so

Excess is the whole point of New Year's Eve.
Yes, excess!  Its purpose is to give us too much
of the holidays, and so cut the pain of watching
them disappear with the old year into the great
vanished with nothing to look forward to but
two or three more dreary months of winter.

Yes, New Year's Eve is at war with New Years.
So use the contradiction to fit  your own needs.
If you want a new start, get to bed early and
rise and shine and go for a bracing swim at
dawn on New Year's Day.  Make your new
start.  If you're sad to see the holidays go,
party until you can barely lift your painful
head from its hung over pillow and say with
someone or the other from Shakespeare:

"If all the year were sporting holidays,
To play would be as tedious as to work."

                                                               -

Updating Memories, or

Why We Go Home For The Holidays

As people age out of college and into their
20s and 30s, they often find their regular
trips home for the holiday celebrations
difficult in several ways.

First there is the problem of regressing.
Adults tend to fall back into relationships with
their siblings and parents more typical of
adolescence, and the result is often to feel
somewhat frustrated or even powerless
in the face of certain seemingly inevitable
family dynamics. 

Tensions between family members are often
present but suppressed under the social pressure
of togetherness at the holidays, and boredom
is very common as time can hang heavy under
the rigors of enforced family unity.

All in all it can be a rough couple of days.
Relief and a feeling of liberation is often the
overwhelming feelings when returning to
one's own home from the family home at
the end of these ordeals; but the funny thing
is that once the trip is actually over, it does
not take much time for the trip to move within
our memory in a positive direction.

Our minds take a trip which was not entirely
satisfactory at the time - of course I exclude
the extreme episodes of dysfunction and
unhappiness which are a different matter - and
turns it into another in a series of happy memories,
these happy memories being mainly made up of
episodes which were generally flatter and sometimes
fraught with tension at their origin.*

It's not that all these episodes are remembered as
happy, it's that as a whole the series of them is very
satisfying to us.   Small gestures such as toasts or
giving thanks together grow in significance in
our memories.  Much is forgotten, and that which
is remembered is necessarily that which holds
interest for us.  The people we love have a special
charm for us in their absence,  and we come to
value those things which hold us together more than
those which divide us.

It's a very important process.  If romantic love
grows in the imagination, familial love takes hold
and survives in the memory.  Each family trip
extends the reign of memory over another piece
of time, keeping the family members' memories
aging in synch, and building together the foundation
for happy future memories.


*To speak of an experience's origin is to
acknowledge that the experience of anything
extends through all the times the mind 
remembers and dwells on it.