What are you doing New Year’s?
New Year’s 2020-2021 is only the third time in my life that I have not spent the strange, suspended-in-time week between Christmas and early January in some snow-swept, beautiful and remote corner of Sweden, singing, eating, drinking fantastically strong coffee, walking over thickly frozen lakes and generally having a Jolly Good Time with the oldest of friends.
I know that for many people, New Year’s Eve is a bit of a non-event. But for me, the turning of the year is a special and magical time, full of hope, celebration, tradition and renewal. In a ‘normal’ year, I would celebrate New Year’s eve itself with about 50 Swedes. We’d have a sit-down dinner, a feast of local delicacies: seared cubes of raw fish which melt in the mouth with wild herbs, braised ox steak, ginger-bread panna cotta, delightfully astringent (and terrifyingly alcoholic) ‘snaps’, with the Swedes pulling the same trick on me every year about which is the disgusting, aniseed-flavoured variant, sipped or knocked back between drinking songs, known off by heart and sung in raucous harmony by the whole room. There are open fires and candles, there is live music and dancing. There is more singing. And then there is a moment of quiet stillness as we wait for midnight before a bell is rung, the champagne corks pop, and the room melts into a sea of people exchanging hugs and wishing each other ‘Gott nytt år!’, ‘Happy new year!’
This is how my New Year’s Eves have looked pretty much my whole life, but since 2016, there is another tradition which I have celebrated with a small sub-section of this larger group of Swedes. These special few, who for now I shall just call the ‘Room 10 Ladies’ (and honorary gentlemen), deserve a completely separate story all of their own, but suffice to say for now, that they are some of the finest women I know, bound together by friendships forged over lifetimes. Before the official New Year’s Eve festivities kick off, the Room 10 Ladies gather together to practice this newer tradition over an impressive collection of whiskies, with three pieces of paper each. On each piece of paper, we have written lists, considered and constructed over the preceding days.
On the first sheet of paper, each person has written about things which have happened in the year departing which they are happy to see the back of. Going into 2020, after a few very tough years, I really believed 2020 would be my year. (You may laugh, I have). As it turned out, it wasn’t really anyone’s year, and I doubt anyone would struggle to fill pages with things they’re glad to see the back of from the past 12 months. For me, 2020 has forced me to deal with some heart-breaking losses, health challenges both mental and physical, separation from the people I love, and the loss of my livelihood, at least temporarily. I know others will have had it ‘worse’, but this isn’t about comparison with what anyone else has had to deal with. This is about giving space to and acknowledging what has been hard for you. It doesn’t help the pain of your broken wrist one bit to know someone else has a broken leg next door.
The second piece of paper contains a list of those things the year has given us for which we are grateful. Writing this can be a bit more of a challenge, particularly after a very tough time, but it can also be so empowering because it is about reclaiming the narrative of your own story. Even in the ashes of 2020, there are positives to be found if we look for them. Some things going onto my list will include gratitude for my health and that of my family, thankfulness for the roof over my head and the food I’ve had the time to cook and enjoy eating, gratitude for the beautiful countryside and parkland around me, for the fact I’ve been in touch with my siblings more than ever before, albeit over zoom, for the support and love my friends have shown me, even in the midst of their own struggles, for the fact that a vaccine now exists and shows a way out of the pandemic. You can get as small as you like with this list. I’ll also be including the fact I saw a kingfisher for the first time out in the park the other day. Anything that makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside is valid.
The third list contains promises to yourself for the next year. This language is important, because what this really is not is a list of New Year’s resolutions. It is not a list of punishments you will inflict on yourself (‘I will lose 5 kg, I will run every day, I will stop doing this or that). It’s the kind of promise you might make to a loved one about how you will care for and support them through the coming year. These are intentions, not terms and conditions, and they are lovingly given. Maybe you will promise to be kinder in the way you talk to yourself about things you struggle with, or that you will try to practice gratitude more often. Maybe, especially after a year like this one, you promise to yourself that you will let go of trying to control things you have no power over, and forgive yourself for trying to do this as you struggled through the pandemic. Perhaps you promise your body that you will take it out for a walk every day when you can, because you know it makes you feel better. Whatever you do, keep it kind.
Take as much time as you can to think about what feels right to go on each of your lists. Often I think about them whilst out walking in the days before the New Year, and write things down in a few sittings with a candle and a cup of tea somewhere. Also, the lists can be as long or as short as you like, whatever comes is fine.
So, now you have your lists, what next? Back on a normal New Year’s Eve, before the main festivities begin, the Room 10 Ladies gather with our papers. Not everyone wants to share what they have written, sometimes it’s enough just to acknowledge these things to yourself, but some of us will read things we’ve written from one, two or all three lists. Often there are tears, always we smile and laugh, recognising our shared and different struggles and joys, some of which we didn’t know the others were dealing with. We drink some whisky, and eventually put on our winter coats and boots, head out into the cold night, punctuated by twinkling fairy lights and outdoor candles, and join everyone else for a cocktail pre-dinner.
But before we head from the cocktail mingling up to the dining room for the main dinner feast, there is one final part of this ceremony to attend to: the burning of the papers. We’ve had some very mixed success with this over the years, from solemn ceremonies dropping papers one by one into a roaring open fire, to hilarious attempts to get some flames going in an otherwise cold grate so that our innermost secrets aren’t left there for someone to accidentally find the following day. Someone asked me once why we had to burn our lists, but for me, the burning part is absolutely crucial because it means we have to let go of the things we’ve written. I’ve thought about each aspect carefully and respectfully, but these papers don’t exist as things to be checked back against. I can’t look back and see that I’ve ‘failed’ at any of those promises as I might with a written list of New Year’s resolutions. This is just a moment of looking it all squarely in the eye, and then just letting it go, along with the rest of 2020.
Don’t get me wrong, having to make do with carrying on this tradition over zoom will be right up there on list number one of things which can do one from this year. I know it will hurt not to be able to hug everyone as the new year comes in, and I know that the tough things from 2020 won’t just magically disappear as we head into 2021. But nevertheless, I’m going to take this opportunity for a moment for hope, release and renewal with both hands, and I’ll be keeping everything crossed for 2021 bringing relief, release, happiness, togetherness and all manner of good things to everyone.