How are We ending 2025 and beginning 2026?

Last night, I canceled my intense workout class scheduled for 9:30AM on January 1, 2026. I figured that I don’t want that to be the energy I begin this fresh new calendar year with. I am a firm believer that the energy we encounter, pursue, or choose has the deep capacity to stick to us and follow us around—for better or for worse.

If you pay attention to the unfolding of time and how the natural world transitions from season to season—you might notice it is subtle, gentle, preparing its way by taking its time and gently urging creatures to prepare themselves. If you take notice of how we humans prepare the way for transition into new seasons, it's like a bulldozer rolling straight through the sacred to get to the glitzy. Halloween decorations and candy emerges on store shelves July 5 (if we are lucky it arrives in August), Christmasy things are displayed all shiny and bright on those same shelves October 1, we blaze past Thanksgiving to instead push consumption of stuff, stuff, and more stuff and wonder why we are so sick and exhausted by the time December 25 occurs.

I felt saddened pulling into my driveway on Tuesday, someone’s stripped bare Christmas tree was lying out by their trash. All its twinkle lights and bright happy baubles removed, left out in the cold. I feel a sadness in my own chest and heart about this first Christmas away from Charleston and how I feel like I was swept up in all the chaos that I couldn’t quite wrap my fingers around the calm I so desperately want to celebrate the gift of Christ’s birth.

People embody the week between Christmas and the New Year differently—without a doubt my least favorite day of the year to work is the one after Christmas, and yet for many it is necessary. In an ideal sense, the week between Christmas and the New Calendar Year would be a gentle in between. That hovering on the turn of something new, finding a gentle rhythm of rest and coziness that is invited by the Winter Solstice on December 21 and the calm following December 25’s rush. Did you know that the Twelve Days of Christmas actually begin on December 25 and end on January 5? That in the holy story the Magi otherwise called the Three Wise Men don’t arrive till January 5. That really, December 25 is just the beginning? 

Currently, we are on the seventh day of Christmas that just so happens to also be the last day of the calendar year. In typical human productive and pressuring ways we put a lot of expectations on this new year—with plans, goals, and ambitions to make this year the “best yet” to skinnier, fitter, harder working, more focused and driven—to outshine others and our own past selves. Seeing the first of the calendar year as the reset button—time to “get serious” about our goals, our ambitions. 

But remember how I mentioned that the natural turning of the seasons is gentle, kind, granting us time to prepare ourselves? Well, we were asked to prepare for the winter and now we are invited to be here and now, in the cold, in the dark. Called to light candles to soften the harsh edges of the dark, to be in awe of just how pastel a winter sunset is, to eat rich and nourishing foods that will stick to our bones, drink tea, sleep, read, crochet. January 1 is fresh into our holy winter season—it is not the time to go hard on reinventing yourself (frankly, I don’t think any of us need to do that anyway—we are enough as we are). If, however, you want to make a healthy and intentional lifestyle change the Spring equinox is a far more appropriate time as our energy (along with the natural world’s) picks up and starts moving us.

Winter is the time to rest, to renew our energy by nourishing our minds, our bodies, our spirits. 

Three-hundred sixty four days ago, I woke up in our Charleston apartment sick with yet another head cold, burnt out, depleted, utterly exhausted, fearful, and viscerally angry. Frustrated with how tired I was, how burnout consumed my thoughts and my body, deeply resentful of having had to the work the holidays—and exhausted from hoarding all that anger in my mind and heart. This heaviness has followed me. Through so many beautifully high and lovely moments—that certainly outnumbered the low. That energy has not necessarily been bad—just heavy, it is what it is and I am grateful I have had it to keep me company to help point me to what I need next. These final few days of 2025 have invited me to let go of the heaviness, to let go of the anger and the fear, so I might be free to receive in trust hope and joy.

So, on January 1, 2026 I won’t be hustling in an intense and high energy workout class (that I have taken many times before and will take in the future) instead I will begin my year with something a bit softer, a bit sleepier, a bit cozier. Awaken wrapped in crisp, fresh, cloud white sheets wearing super soft and clean Christmas pajamas. A slow morning snuggling with my love, cooking breakfast, watching TV, drinking tea, a call with a dear friend, maybe a walk in the fresh 2026 air, all ending with a nourishing stick to ones bones meal.

I end this beautiful, wild, chaotic, and magical year with gratitude for all her secrets, all her magic, all her blessings, all her lessons, all her gifts. I release all that was so I might greet 2026 with open arms to receive all she has to offer with joy and gentleness.

Friends, here is to a soft winter, a bright new calendar year, and all the possibilities there are for a more loving, kind, just, joy filled world. 

Grace, Peace, and All My Love,

Margaret 

P.S. I just discovered a piece of writing entitled “The Magi Have Not Arrived Yet” that I wrote the beginning of January 2024—clearly I regularly feel the need to remind myself to be, to enjoy, to sit right where I am.