Many people find it hard to keep up morale in the dead of winter. For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, that would begin during the month of January. To our antipodal friends down south whose mid-winter falls during July, simply frame this discussion with that month in mind (while I do touch on December-specific ‘after-holidays’ blues, you can still apply the overall message to your own wintertime).
If you have a hard time embracing January, you aren’t alone. There’s nothing wrong with you. You may just have to unlearn a few things and then let your new perspective lead you toward making impactful changes as needed. This has nothing to do with ‘new year resolutions’ or anything that feels hard or goes against your grain. This is going to be relieving, I promise! First we’ll delve into the how January became so hard in the first place.
The January Struggle
Why does January feel like a struggle to so many? It’s a combination of things happening concurrently. For one, we’ve just finished the Western ‘holiday season’ that culminates with Christmas at the end of December (or New Year’s on January 1st, depending how you look at it). After such a festive and heart-warming month filled with happy events and (hopefully) time off work to share meaningful moments with loved ones, January is when we all ‘get back to normal’ and face the daily grind again. And that ain’t fun. It’s like a nasty cup of cheap black coffee after indulging in a delicious high-quality latte.
In addition to the cultural shift in daily reality, we’re faced with even colder days and still-dark evenings. It will still be months before we start regaining our evening daylight, and despite a few short-lived warm spells, we won’t enjoy truly tolerable weather for another couple of months either. Coldness reigns, and coldness causes us to pull our coats tighter and shorten what necessary time we spend outside. Fewer casual meetups or outdoor chats with acquaintances. Except for die-hard cold weather fans, the outdoors are not hospitable to leisurely strolls.
Another difficulty is the fervor with which everyone’s expected to bounce into the new year. New Year’s resolutions are a popular tradition – often involving dieting or exercise. Necessary diets and appropriate exercise are good and helpful things, but midwinter is hardly the time to jump full-force into extreme exertion or ‘beach-bod’ deprivation. If anything, it’s a time for hearty vegetable soups and wholesome bread. Food that warms our bodies and souls. Exercise should be customized to each individual’s natural rhythms and preferences. If it’s something you truly love, you’re way more likely to stick with it in the long run (and isn’t that the point?).
Is it Really a ‘New Year?’
Julius Caesar originally instituted January 1st as the start of the new year in 45 BCE. This date became even more widespread and basically universally accepted in Western culture when the Catholic Church instituted the Gregorian calendar via Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 CE. Yet while January 1st is generally what Westerners think of as the ‘new year,’ many cultures worldwide that have long predated the Catholic Church and Roman Empire consider completely different seasons to be the new year. Persians celebrate Nowruz on the Spring Equinox, Jewish people celebrate Rosh Hashanah in early fall, and Chinese and many others celebrate the lunar new year anytime from late January through early February.
We are culturally conditioned to think of January 1st as the new year; however, if you remove cultural constructs and gaze solely at nature, does the dead of winter really feel like a new beginning? Or does it feel like a time of rest? If you follow nature, nothing really gets started again until spring. Yes, things ‘get ready’ to germinate during winter but nothing’s actually going anywhere yet. Nothing’s ‘pushing through’ to start life anew. Lucky bears just sleep most of the season away. Roots lie dormant in the ground. If we follow nature’s example, we start to realise that we, too, long to lie safe and warm in our ‘dens.’ Regardless of when you believe a new year truly begins, you can’t deny a natural rhythm to biology. And that’s what this January new year does when it pressures us into productivity.
I’m all for goal setting and intentions and big efforts toward good things. I just don’t believe winter is necessarily the time for all that. It should be left up to each individual, but ultimately January is calling us to rest and chill out.
Relearn What January’s All About
You can choose to continue to follow the dominant culture and accept January as the start of your new year, too, and adopt what society has prescribed as our way to approach it. This makes complete sense if you enjoy January the way it is! But if you’re reading this, I have a feeling you may feel otherwise. You can therefore opt to gently remove those culturally dominant views and expectations and stand firm in whatever beliefs and values make the most sense to you. But even if you know you no longer care to follow the popular culture’s take on how to approach this month, what do you do instead? How do you go forward and what changes do you make to feel good about this time of year? Let’s go week by week with some ideas to ease into where you want to be.
Don’t let the post-holidays blues get you down. I’ll guide you through January, starting with the last week of December, so that you have a plan and a purpose that doesn’t exceed your energy levels. January is a beautiful time of year because it invites absolute rest. We may not be able to surrender all of life’s demands, but we do have some power over which demands we choose to cling to and subsequently choose to let go of in the name of rest.
A Detailed Plan to Restructure January
Last week of December
The last week of December should truly be when your restful season begins, if it hasn’t already begun with Yule or Christmas. During this time, continue to enjoy the Christmas season if you celebrate, yes – even during the days after. While Christmas Day ‘officially’ concludes at the end of the 25th, the season doesn’t culminate until at least the end of the December (and, for many, Christmas lasts until Three Kings Day on January 6th). Take this opportunity to relax and enjoy the festive environment you’ve nurtured and spend time with family and loved ones in the comfort of a cosy home. Try to let go of a planned agenda and embrace a quiet Christmasy afterglow filled with loving connection and perhaps also the fun of new gifts. Wear those holiday pyjamas every day if you want!
First week of January
Happy New Year! However you celebrate New Year’s (and no matter your take on the new year’s actual date, there’s no reason you can’t still party with everyone else!), January 2nd officially beings the ‘post-holidays’ season (except for the continuing Christmas season mentioned above for those who observe Three Kings Day on the 6th). For many, this is when ‘reality’ slumps in and depression ensues. It needn’t be that way. The most important thing you can do to combat that negative mindset is to rethink the way you embrace the start of this month.
In many traditions, a full house cleaning accompanies the new year. This is certainly true for Chinese New Year. If you’re truly motivated and want to clean your house, by all means do it. A good cleaning is always helpful! But if it’s the last thing you want to do or if you simply aren’t up for it, don’t sweat it. Again, dead of winter is not intuitively the time to clean house. Of course, it’s important to keep your home generally clean and tidy, but this is not the time to scour everything (unless that truly brings you joy and fulfillment).
What you do want to do, however, is deal with any clutter. Christmas tends to accrue a lot of stuff. And while maybe some or much of it is good, there is still the mental effort we have to put forward to figure out where to put it. If you’re like me, excess clutter – even good things – causes frustration and ultimately mental fatigue at the thought of even deciding where to put it. The best thing you can do in this case is to set aside time to tackle all the stuff that ‘needs a home.’ You’ll feel much better after this initial step.
Second week of January
If you haven’t already started to take down any remaining December holiday decorations, now is the time to do so. Gradually pack up decorations (starting with the most exclusively ‘Christmasy’ as those will be most out of place by this time), little by little, until they are (at least mostly) all down by the end of this week. Try to store them back in their respective boxes and bins soon after taking them down, too, so you don’t increase visual clutter with unboxed ornaments and things scattered about.
A note on Christmas décor: I’ve made the conscious decision to leave a few Christmas ornaments on the tree at the preference of my Christmas-loving three-year-old who seemed a bit sad after I removed the remaining ornaments shortly after New Year’s. Children are never in a hurry to end a beloved holiday and while I have gently explained to my sons how Christmas is seasonal and everything will be back out next year (otherwise how would it be special if things were left out year-round?), they are ever-nostalgic and sentimental about the holiday season. So I made the sensitive decision to extend the last visual bits of Christmas into mid-January. I’ll phase them out in time, but even though my young kids don’t inform my general decorating decisions, I want to respect their pure joy and preference of extending the holiday’s symbolic appeal.
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At the same time that you are clearing space formerly occupied by holiday décor, start scavenging evergreen foliage outside to bring indoors and adorn your mantel, windows, and doorways. If you live somewhere tropical, find any prevalent green foliage native to your area. If you aren’t able to secure natural trimmings from your local environment, you can still have fresh evergreen foliage shipped to you. Whichever plants you use and however you find them, the idea is to replace curated holiday vignettes with simple and natural greenery symbolic of the wintry season. You are segueing from Christmas, or whichever holiday(s) you observe and for which you decorate, to the beauty of nature in winter.
Third week of January
By mid-January, a fresh evergreen airiness should dominate your space. I’ve clipped pine branches and secured them high along the wall, above windows, and in vases on mantels and tables. Let me emphasize that I put barely any effort into this. I truly just stuck branches wherever I thought they’d look refreshing – maybe arranged some here or there as needed, but it wasn’t anything fancy. It was enough to lend natural comfort and keep the home from looking too stark after removing Christmas décor.
During winter, we traditionally don’t want to see a ton of vivid colour in our home since that can be overstimulating, but it helps to mimic the calm and soothing natural world by embracing a spectrum of handsome greens and light/white hues (or maybe soft wintry blues). These palates will mimic winter’s lovely evergreens, snow, and white/blue sky.
Time to indulge in rest
January is a time to relax no matter what’s going on and no matter where you are in the process of decluttering and redecorating (focus on progress, not perfection! Remember, this isn’t hustle culture). But once you’ve got your space tidied and adorned with lovely foliage and a gentler palate, it’s an especially delightful time to bask in your den of comfort.
Burn fragrant candles, indulge in books, play relaxing music, and prioritize comfort. Embrace your hygge home. Do whatever regular work you need to do to meet basic needs and normal survival, but (contrary to popular New Year resolutions) don’t jump into new projects or ambitious activities. Save those for a time that feels more appropriate for you, whether during the lunar new year in a few weeks or the turning of spring in a couple of months. January is a time to rest, relax, and hibernate as much as feasibly possible.
If, like most people, you must leave your home to regularly engage in the outside world’s rigors and demands with maximum productivity and energy (despite the lack of sunlight and ruthless cold), it is that much more crucial that you curate your home to be a cosy and relaxing sanctuary where you can ‘hibernate’ as much as possible while there. Eliminate unnecessary tasks and minimize excess engagement. Your energy levels may occasionally and naturally gravitate toward more fun and excitement – and winter parties can certainly be loads of fun – but be careful not to ‘over-plan’ and save space for what your body truly wants and needs (which might end up being time and space to just be).
What if You’re Bored or Unmotivated?
If you truly cannot enjoy simply resting and relaxing (or if the thought of doing so drives you mad), then what may be happening is that your body (and mind) is so used to being on overdrive, working hurrying and never stopping, that you haven’t been able to sit still long enough to remember what it is that feeds your soul in the darkest time of the year (or at any time of ease and rest). I’ve heard it takes at least 10 days into a vacation before your mind truly gets out of ‘work mode’ because of how high-strung we all are from the non-stop day-to-day responsibilities of everyday life. While most of us agree that’s no kind of life, it’s unfortunately the reality for most Americans, as well as for much of the world’s majority who aren’t wealthy enough to ‘afford’ the healthy work/life balance we all need.
It is all too easy to fall out of touch with our true desires, our old hobbies, and the passions that used to bring us so much joy. Being out of practice distances us from the raw excitement we once naturally felt about any given topic or activity. It takes time and patience to redevelop this. Don’t worry if you’re in this position; it will change. Start by focusing on simple things – the easiest pleasures (a funny book, movie or podcast, for instance) to bring you out of your overproduction shell. One of the easiest ways to spark inspiration is to try something new, even if it’s simply going to a new restaurant or café. Call up that new friend or acquaintance who you like and hear their life story. Things like these can lead you back to yourself and what things truly turn you on.
Reclaim January for the Comfort it Offers
Ultimately what you want to do in January is a whole lot of relaxing. You want to make your home a comfortable and un-busy space to offer a refreshing and inviting environment. Then, any time you are not otherwise taking care of strictly necessary tasks (i.e. working, cooking, dishes, laundry), you want to indulge in all your favourite restful activities while enjoying the warmth and comfort of your home. That looks different for everyone, and any activities of choice could be solo or with loved ones. Some examples include solving jigsaw puzzles, enjoying favourite snacks or drinks, reading, writing, watching shows/movies/documentaries, playing music, or simply lounging and enjoying doing nothing. It is all absolutely okay. Whatever resonates with you is perfect!