After the Holidays, the Laundry

Last week we closed out the major winter holidays: Christmas, Hanukkah, and the solstice. 

Whatever your tradition, though, there’s a particularly strong gravitational pull around Christmas. Everyone feels its cultural weight. Certainly this is true for practicing Christians. But also, the entire retail economy revolves around Christmas, and so do many of our calendars, expectations, and emotional energy.

We build toward it for weeks – shopping, wrapping, cooking, traveling, gathering, anticipating, hoping. There’s stress, joy, pressure, nostalgia, excitement. And then… whoosh. It’s over.

The house is quieter. The guests leave. The decorations come down. We’re left with leftovers, packaging, and whatever emotions remain.

For some people, the holiday is a high point — and the comedown can feel real. For others, it’s hard — complicated family dynamics, loneliness, grief, or simply exhaustion. 

Either way, the aftermath has a way of revealing something universal: how much we live in the leaning forward, moving from expectation to expectation. We chase a particular feeling, cling to a version of how things should go… and then suffer when the results weren’t what we were looking for.

Mindfulness offers another way: not denying joy, not avoiding disappointment, but loosening our grip on expectations and just resting in whatever is here now, in the present moment.

Because the truth is that everything is impermanent: The intensity passes. The mood shifts. The holiday glow fades — not because we did it wrong, but because that’s how experience works.

And with the new year approaching, this feels like a powerful reminder: we have the ability to set intentions without clinging to outcomes; make plans without living in the future; and meet what comes with less tension and more equanimity.

Maybe the post-holiday lull is a great opportunity to come back home to the present moment… which is actually the only place life is really happening.