I am a finisher. Oh, not necessarily of marathons or anything like that. No, I am more the kind of person who gets a weird satisfaction out of finishing the last cracker in the box or making someone eat the last pickle in the jar. Then I can recycle the box or wash up the jar and feel strangely that I completed something and all the detritus has gone to its rightful place: the recycle bin, the storage room, someone’s intestines.

I have to admit that I’m a little (okay, a lot) like this when it comes to the end of the year. On December 1, I look longingly toward my new planner (that I ordered in September) and get “excited” about penciling in all the birthdays and paydays and Canadian holidays that my American planner doesn’t have the good sense to include. Making the first mark in it is difficult for me, however. I subscribe to Anne Shirley’s philosophy: “Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?”

It is nice to think that, but it is also a little naive. Turning the page to January 1, 2021 is not a magic spell, except in my brain, which is a real place and I can’t wholly discount the power of the mind to create something tangible. And 2020 has been – shall we say – a little surreal. To quote Barbara Poelle in the latest issue of Writer’s Digest: “This year there was a global pandemic, a sonic boom of needed steps in social and racial justice…an election cycle that is rocking the foundation of (their) nation…and murder hornets.”

And so I find myself once again in The In Between. I don’t think it’s any mistake that we celebrate Christmas at the end of the year – there’s all sorts of circumstantial evidence that Jesus was born around this time – but also Christmas makes us sloooowwww down, before we start mistaking up a whole new year. Oh, sure, it may feel like your days are whizzing by with the extra chores of shopping and baking and wrapping and decorating – or whatever extras you assign to December. These things keep me grounded firmly in the present, away from wishing away the time and also, away from that spanky new planner.

Last weekend, Rick and I put up our Christmas tree. We enjoyed it unadorned except for lights for an evening and then, on Sunday, as we pulled out the boxes of decorations, I groaned and wished that the Christmas Tree Decorating Fairy would show up and do this for me. But I knew that She/He didn’t really exist and I might as well “get it over with”. Because I do like me a decorated tree to look at every day of December. And Fairies, though prodigious in their powers, probably do not know how exactly I like the ribbon to go around my tree and which decorations need to be relegated to the backside because I love them less than others that deserve front-and-center prominence.

And it was a lovely afternoon: just me and my husband and Michael Bublé and Mariah Carey engaging in a tradition that is timeless and ever-new. And it was nice to get it done before December 1 – a little less rushed than if we squeezed it into a weeknight in the middle of the month and a little more special because we did it together.

As much as I like to Finish Things, there’s a lot to be said for Holding Off, Slowing Down & Pausing. After all, it’s not really good sense to eat twenty Oreos just so I can recycle the box. It’s also not good sense to waste all my December days wishing for January 1. The shopping, the baking, the wrapping, the decorating are ALL GOOD THINGS. I will try to savor my Oreos one at a time and give thanks for all the days that I get to have.