THE LONG JOURNEY FROM CHRISTMAS TO NEW YEARS

I don’t know about you, but I find the time from Christmas to New Years particularly long and dreary. For me, Christmas is the real end of the year, the New Year the beginning of the next, and the time inbetween more like a funeral, with everyone wearing black while brooding over all they’re missing. Add the pandemic and the increasingly chaotic state of government affairs and it seems like everyone is reluctantly walking through molasses to the sound of a funeral dirge. Okay, color me black (but with little sparkles here and there) and brush it off to post-holiday blues, but I think not. I’ve never been dystopian nor utopian but rather well grounded in between both as a person and author. I’ve had plenty of darkness at the beginning of my life, and plenty of warm and fuzzy light in my adulthood. The opposite of how I view the time between Christmas and the New Year.

I’m reminded that for many, the New Year far overshadows any religious, spiritual or cultural holidays, and I’m one who enjoys sending off the old year in the Japanese tradition, with a cup of Toshikoshi soba as the sun sets, gettin up before sunrise to welcome the new year sun with a hot cup of tea in hand and a bite of chocolate or azuki pastry. The morning can then be spent preparing the afternoon New Year’s “osechi-ryori” feast. This late afternoon dinner consists of numerous small food offerings, not unlike Spanish tapas, including some of my personal favorites, kuromame (sweetened black beans); kamaboko (fish cakes); kurikonton (boiled mashed sweet potatoes and sweet chestnuts); namasu (shredded carrot and Japanese radish seasoned with vinegar; ebi (shrimp); kinpira gobo (burdock root marinated with vinegar and sesame); and subasu (lotus root seasoned with vinegar), all while watching the popular Japanese New Year’s musical variety program, Kouhakuutagassen, on television and visiting a shrine or temple late that night. It’s sort of like eating fast food snacks while watching football and attending church service that night. Except I’m not particularly fond of violence and contact sports.

2020 has, rightly in my mind, been popularly dubbed “The Plague Year” in passing. I certain hope the New Year is such that it will acquire a better epitaph.

Sincerely,
Raymond Gaynor

The Edge of Madness
Total Meltdown: A Tripler and Clarke Adventure
Quantum Death

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