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Every year, during that peculiar no-man’s-land of time between Christmas and New Year’s, I’ve been known to indulge in a rather unbecoming fit of post-holiday blues. The Christmas season, with its lights and fir trees, its butter cookies and general coziness, has always been my favorite time of year. As an adult, I must confess that I have continued to succumb to that childlike after-Christmas melancholy, when after all those weeks of buildup and anticipation, I must accept the reality that the party is most definitely over. Each year, as I’ve walked listlessly from room to room, surveying a tree that is dropping an increasing number of needles, a Christmas tablecloth now decorated with bread crumbs and cranberry stains, and tins upon tins of goodies that are tasting staler by the day, I have despaired that there is nothing left but to leave the warmth of candles and carols behind and venture out into the bleak and barren wasteland that is January.

I might have continued this pathetic yearly tradition for the rest of my life if my fourteen-year-old daughter Mariclaire had not chosen to reveal herself as a philosopher—and perhaps, a budding psychologist and poet as well. Upon once again hearing my pitiful lament at having to box up all the decorations and toss our pretty tree on the curb, she cast me one of those fed-up, assessing glances at which teenagers are so adept.  

“Mom,” she said, “I know I’m supposed to be sad that Christmas is over, but I’m not. I like January. Christmas is great and everything, but it’s kind of like eating cheesecake. The first few bites are really good, but then it starts tasting too rich and you just want to push it away and have something like lemon sorbet. To me, January is lemon sorbet.”

Now, as a writer, I am always on the lookout for a good metaphor and a mother’s bias notwithstanding, I had to admit that this was one of the best I’d heard in quite a while. And like many a memorable and pithy remark, hers had the power to alter a whole way of thinking. Unwittingly, my wise daughter had given me the gift of a fresh perspective and I resolved then and there to quit whining and to begin viewing the entire de-Christmas-ing process in a new light. Rather than seeing it as a depressing chore, just maybe I could turn it into a kind of sacrament, a benediction to the old year and a path-clearing for the new one.

The philosopher Simone Weil once said that “the future is made of the same stuff as the present.” To some extent, I think that’s true, but in light of my daughter’s philosophy, it seems a bit jaded now. In January, if we let it, the future can feel like different stuff. Newer stuff.

As a symbolic gesture, I made some lemon sorbet for the family, and although it’s sometimes hard to tell with fourteen-year-olds, I think Mariclaire was pleased at my ability to come around. And as I stood there squeezing lemons in my newly undecorated kitchen, their clean, citrus scent filled the room, infusing the air with freshness and the unmistakable tang of possibility. 

From Such Stuff As Start Are Made Of, on Amazon here.