By Christine Organ of christineorgan.com
“If you eat two prunes on Christmas Eve, you’ll have good luck in the new year,” my grandma said, thrusting a bowl of sticky black prunes toward me.
Her superstitious logic was both ridiculous and endearing. In those days, my grandma had a knack for making just about anything – even eating prunes – seem like a fun adventure, so I plopped not just one, but three prunes on my plate. Just think of the good fortune that will greet me in the new year, I thought as I popped them into my mouth. 1989 is going to be THE BEST.
Christmas came and went, and I forgot all about my grandma’s superstitious prediction – until the second day of the year, that is, when I slipped on the ice and broke my arm in two places. As I sat on the hospital table, I remembered those silly prunes and cursed my grandma’s silly holiday superstition. I’ve hated New Year’s ever since.
Despite the shining lights and pretty pictures, the holidays can also be a hotbed of unrealistic expectations, stretched-too-thin emotions, and frazzled nerves. Even under the best of circumstances, by the time Christmas is over, exhausted and full, the only thing I crave is simplicity and rest. Yet here comes New Year’s Eve with its brashness and compulsory demands to go, go, go and do, do, do.
There were many years when I surrendered to the compulsion, donning a party dress and paying too way too much money to stand amongst hundreds (thousands?) of strangers in a crowded bar or nightclub so loud that I could barely hear – let alone carry on a discussion with – my friends among them. Instead of ushering in the new year with cheer, most of these “celebrations” just left me broke, hungover, and more exhausted than ever – and not one of them ever came close to the fun times with good friends that I’ve had on a random Friday night or during an impromptu summer barbeque.
And then there is the pressure to make and keep resolutions. For many years, I fell into the new year, new me line of reasoning. I would resolve to eat less sugar or call home more or establish a meditation practice, but come the second or third week of January, the only thing I had to show for my efforts was the guilt that came along with my failed attempts to actually keep said resolutions.
These days I’m spending New Year’s Eve in quieter ways, capturing some of the rest and simplicity that I craved all those years. We have hosted a few friends for a last-minute, family-friendly get-together in which we celebrated the new year earlier than usual so tired children could get to bed. We have had casual dinners at a restaurant down the street. And for the past two years, we have hosted my husband’s brother and his family for a night of games, movies, and always lots of laughter.
And I’ve given up on the pressure to reinvent myself with the turning of the calendar, reasoning that real change comes from the flipping of a switch inside and not the flipping of a calendar page. If I want to make a change, or if I want to start a new habit, I decide when to start.
Much of my hatred of New Year’s Eve comes from the compulsion to celebrate a certain way, the expectation that joyful revelry comes in specific packages and looks a certain way. But what I am realizing is that, like most things, happiness and contentment can only come from within when we are true to ourselves. And I wonder if, in some odd way, the importance of contentment and perspective is what my grandma had been trying to teach me with the prunes all those years ago. Because when I called her a few days later to tell her that the prunes had backfired, she confidently assured me they had, in fact, delivered the promised good luck.
“Just think,” she said. “If you hadn’t eaten the prunes, you probably would have broken your arm and your leg.”
A version of this post originally appeared on the author’s website.
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About the Author
Christine Organ is the author of “Open Boxes: the gifts of living a full and connected life.” Her work has been published on The New York Times, the Washington Post, Huffington Post, Scary Mommy, Redbook, Good Housekeeping, Mamalode, BonBon Break, and Brain, Child. She writes at www.christineorgan.com.