The Lost Art of the Holiday Pause

Why Are We Rushing the Year Away?

This is really me, everything else is AI-generated.

The holiday pause we’ve misplaced

Bloomfield, CT — We are officially two weeks away from the New Year. The calendar still clearly reads “December,” yet if you look around at the collective mindset, it feels as though we have already fast-forwarded to January 1st. We haven't even unwrapped the Christmas gifts or lit the final Hanukkah candles, yet the noise of “New Year, New Me” resolutions and Q1 planning is already deafening.

Why are we acting like the New Year is already here?

This is not just nostalgia talking; it is a yearning for a different pace of life. There was a time when people genuinely took their time. The holiday season was a distinct container of time—a pause button on the chaotic soundtrack of life—where the primary objective was simply to experience joy, connection, and—for many—something sacred.

When December was a sacred pause

When I was a child, the pause was literal. On Sunday evenings in December, we would gather around the table and light the Advent wreath. The lights would go off, except for the soft glow of the Christmas tree and the candles scattered around the room. The tree lights in the living room, the outdoor lights on the bushes visible through the window, and the flicker of candlelight in the dining room turned the house into something hushed and magical. We knew Santa would be coming soon, and that baby Jesus’s birthday was around the corner. My grandmother would be baking his birthday cake—a real birthday cake, served every Christmas—because of course you have cake on a birthday.

Those Sundays were not an “interruption” in productivity; they were the point. No one was multitasking at the table. No one was scrolling for deals or thinking about how to “optimize” the week between Christmas and New Year’s. The pause itself felt like an act of reverence—for the season, for family, and for the idea that some moments deserve to be unhurried.

A whole weekend devoted to wonder

In that earlier rhythm, even the practical work of preparing for the holidays was wrapped in slowness and togetherness. Decorations went up the first full weekend after Thanksgiving. We spent the entire weekend transforming the house, inside and out. My grandfather, an electrician who often picked up extra work on Saturdays, would deliberately not take any extra jobs. My grandmother would take Saturdays off from her part‑time job at Macy’s. That choice alone signaled something important: this time was not for earning; it was for being.

We would go out and get a tree on Friday or Saturday. Grandma would orchestrate the inside of the house, Grandpa would handle the outside lights, and we kids would orbit between them, helping, watching, and, of course, tasting. Cookies and other Christmas treats baked in the kitchen while the house slowly shifted from ordinary to extraordinary. It was not a weekend we rushed through to “get it over with” before moving on to the next item on a holiday checklist. It was an experience to be lived in, hour by hour, as an entire family.

Those rituals marked December as something different from any other month. They said, without anyone needing to put it into words: this is the season when you are allowed to slow down.

How commerce stole the calendar

Today, that sense of a bounded, sacred December is under siege. Retailers have been pushing what’s often called “Christmas creep” for decades: holiday music and merchandise appearing earlier and earlier in the year, eventually swallowing Thanksgiving and creeping into October and even late summer in some places. When the signals of the season arrive months early, the holidays stop feeling like a pause and start feeling like a quarter—another commercial campaign, another content cycle, another opportunity to “leverage” consumer emotion.​

The message is no longer “It’s time to rest and celebrate.” The message is: “It’s time to buy, to plan, to optimize.” Alongside this, productivity culture has colonized even our most intimate rituals. The internet is full of posts about “using the holidays to get a jump on your goals” and “not wasting December.” The pressure is subtle but relentless: if you are not already living in January by mid‑December, you are somehow behind.

Living on fast‑forward

In that environment, it is hard not to feel perpetually on alert. Now, instead of sinking into the soft edges of December, many of us find ourselves constantly checking calendars, inboxes, and sale countdowns. There is a crawling anxiety about what is coming around the corner and what will be missed by not paying attention. The holidays become less about being present and more about not falling behind—on shopping, on email, on self‑reinvention.

That state is not just unpleasant; it is corrosive. As national mental‑health data show the holidays already amplify stress, grief, and anxiety, and the constant push to anticipate the next thing magnifies those feelings. When every moment is framed as preparation for something else—January goals, the next holiday, the next big “reset”—the present moment starts to feel like a waiting room instead of a destination.​

The psychology of savoring

The tragedy is that, in rushing to the next thing, we burn through the very fuel that makes life feel worth living. Research in positive psychology has found that “savoring” pleasant experiences—consciously noticing and lingering on the small details of a positive moment—can increase happiness, reduce stress, and even build resilience. Savoring is not about stretching the clock; it is about deepening experience.​

Studies have shown that when people intentionally savor a moment, like a conversation with a loved one or a beautiful scene, they report stronger positive emotions and a richer sense of time, even after stressful events. In other words, when you allow yourself to fully taste the cookie, to fully feel the candlelight on your face, to fully hear the laughter in the next room, you are not being inefficient—you are investing in your future emotional health.​

Rest as resistance

Of course, it is easy to romanticize the past and ignore its own pressures and exclusions. Not everyone had peaceful holiday dinners or the luxury of time off, then or now. But the point is not to canonize some perfect 1980s or 1990s Christmas; it is to notice what has shifted and what is being lost.

In a culture that treats every month as a runway for the next one and every moment as a chance to optimize, choosing to actually pause is an act of resistance. It says: this evening, this meal, this conversation is not a means to an end. It is the end. It is enough.

Rest is not the enemy of productivity; it is a precondition for any work that is sustainable and meaningful. Psychologists and spiritual traditions alike have long recognized that cycles of work and rest—of striving and sabbath, of preparation and celebration—are healthier than the flat, relentless push of constant “hustle.”​

A different kind of New Year prep

None of this means that reflection, planning, and growth are bad. There is nothing wrong with using the turn of the year to check in with oneself. The problem is when the future consumes the present, when the weeks that were once treated as time to rest, reflect, and rejoice become just another staging ground for “New Year, New Me” branding.

A healthier pattern might look like this:

Let December be December. Block out a few days or evenings that are deliberately unproductive in the conventional sense—no goal‑setting, no life audits, no inbox‑zero marathons.

Replace some of the relentless future‑thinking with small, intentional acts of savoring: the warmth of a mug in your hands, the quiet of a dark room lit only by a tree, the taste of a recipe that has been in your family for generations.​

Treat true presence with your loved ones—and with yourself—as a kind of “soul maintenance” that is just as important as any budget spreadsheet or calendar planning session.​

The New Year will arrive on schedule. It does not need our help to get here faster. Until then, reclaiming what remains of this year as a time to rest, reflect, and rejoice is not only allowed—it is necessary.

Note: The image in this header utilizes a real photo of myself, while the surrounding environment is AI-generated. (I cannot afford all of the lovely holiday decorations depicted!) Additionally, in generating the background content—including the sofa—it appears the AI model (Gemini 3 Pro Nano Banana) may have slightly altered my hand and the lower portion of my body. Aside from the blurring of my hand, however, the representation is true to life.