Every year between the end of Christmas and ringing in the New Year, there is a period of six days. It’s a strange, strange time. My most pressing question is, can I still listen to Christmas music? Or, almost as importantly, can I still bake Christmas cookies? How about if I call them “winter cookies”? I feel that then I should still be able to, but I really just don’t know. Maybe back in the good ole days of the Bubonic Plague and leeching there were little guide books to the proper etiquette. Alas, if there ever was such a thing, it is no more. I am afraid I shall have to wander in the darkness until I stumble into the answer to this critical question: what to make of these six days?

If you have become suddenly stricken by nausea, can no longer see color, or have lost all will to move, I am afraid I cannot help you. Go see a certified practitioner immediately. However, if you felt your world has turned upside down and inside out by my elucidation of this, such an urgent matter, I may be able to offer some comfort. I have devised a few methods to help reorder the world. You may attempt to use the gradient method whereby each day you gradually tone down Christmas related paraphernalia until, at 11:59pm Dec. 31 you have scrubbed it from your life. Alternatively, you can use the replacement method. Here, one chooses a Christmas tradition and then, one per day, replaces it with the proper New Year’s tradition. I would recommend, in order, 1) Christmas decorations 2) Christmas cookies 3) Christmas music 4) Joy 5) Hope 6) Love

Yes, those last three were sarcastic. I should really stop being so sarcastic. Stop it, Sarah. It’s bad for your health. But, I digress. It is of my firm opinion that most folks simply live with the internal dissonance associated with the dilemma I placed before you in the first paragraph. They choose to ignore, uneasily, this quandary. These people hold their breaths and hope that New Year’s will come soon so that they don’t have to think too hard about just what to make of these six days.

Full disclosure: Sometimes I craft my mini-blog-like essays to include words like “leeching” and “quandary” because where else can I use them without sounding Shakespearean? The English language is so very obtuse and abstract yet poignant and potent. I love it.