Celebrating the lull in the week following the whole pointless exercise of Christmas, writes Adam Brophy
THIS IS the best week of the year. It always has been; no matter what, this week is marvellous. As a kid, you get the hang of your new bike. As a teen, you hang with your mates, ignore impending exams, smoke fags and embarrass yourself in front of girls.
The twentysomethings party hard throughout to build up their muscles for NYE, and everyone older downs tools to eat, drink and sleep. Beautiful.
The pressure's off, most obviously off the kids. They no longer have the constant buzzing thought ransacking their heads that Santa's coming soon. Will he bring me what I want?
They've got what he brought. He did good. This week they charge around the place, a place filled with everyone they love from every generation. They believe they're at the centre of all this, and to a point they are.
The two generations preceding them might very well not bother to come together were it not for the little people.
I bash Christmas every year. I'll get off the fence on this one - it makes me want to hurl. The money spent, the heightened expectations, the hassle, the whole pointless exercise. Christmas only gets to the point the week after the big day, when people stop grinding their teeth down to stumps and chill the frock out.
When the tension over whose stuffing should take precedence at the dinner table has subsided. This week the heart rate regulates and the blood pressure drops. This week you look forward to next year in a way that's impossible after the January credit card bill drops.
Because of that, this week is important in a way that the whole two-month build-up to the main event never is. For the first time in however long, you get an opportunity to just be with your family, take walks, chat, without any anxiety about preparation or performance.
During this week, the kids get to see you, and strange as it seems, that beats everything for them. The whole thing is an oddity, a deflation and an exhalation, you can relax. And relaxing and family are two words that rarely go together.
Everyone's off the hamster wheel for a few sweet days. You drop the pressures of the previous weeks and ignore renewed engagement with the world for a little while longer. Into this brief passage of quiet you can ask would you like to start doing anything differently. Incredibly, in this interlude, resolutions make sense.
I beat the rush this year and joined a gym in December to avoid the January stampede. This means I won't be part of the statistics that relay how much money is wasted in annual memberships being bought in the first month of the year and never used past February 1st. It's a small victory but one I need to keep my belief in resolutions alive.
So, in a spirit of positivity, here we go. I resolve to be nicer to my wife and kids. I resolve to work more efficiently so that I don't become stressed out and as a result get nasty with my wife and kids.
I resolve to drink and smoke less and maintain an exercise regime which will keep me reasonably happy with my physical shape and avoid me getting lumpen, followed by the inevitable rattiness with my wife and kids.
I resolve to improve my mind and my spiritual wellbeing, and in doing so expect not to be such a tosser to my wife and kids. I resolve to be nicer. Hopefully, then, my wife and kids won't either leave me or kill me.
There is a theme emerging. In case I've been too subtle, I'll point it out. Whatever happens in the next year, professionally or personally, it all comes back to the few people I spend most of my days shouting at.
I'll point something else out: I make the same resolutions every year, and every year, for a short while, I maintain my focus. Well, for at least as long as the people who grab their waistlines in horror on January 2nd and run to Total Fitness waving a cheque the following day.
That's why this week is important. It's fine sneering at the pointlessness of Christmas and the ridiculous nature of each year attempting to be a better person in the following one, but without this lull, this quiet, we might never have a second to contemplate that things could possibly be different.
That they might always stay as good as they are now, or, with some luck, even improve.
abrophy@irishtimes.com