Six reasons why December holds a special place in my heart

The coming of the new year fills me with a strange kind of optimism. Something about making a new beginning with a clean slate makes me feel like anything is possible. It’s as if this is the year I will become fitter, this is the year I will get my writing in order, this is the year I’ll travel more and so on.

However, you know what’s even better than the new year? The anticipation of it!

Expectation is better than the real thing, right? Just as Friday evening is the best part of the weekend, so is December the best part of the new year.

Since as far back as I can remember it has been my favouritest of months.

First up, it’s holiday time

While in school December meant a whole month-long winter break. Then later when I was working it was about using up leftover CLs (casual leaves). Bliss!

Now I get to spend time with the children. Of course this year the approaching boards and college admissions have messed up things but even so, it’s a good time.

It’s a time to relax

The year is ending. The year’s resolutions have either been completed or given up on – either way one has made peace with the situation. New ones begin only in January, so this is the time when one can put up one’s feet and relax, take a breather from resolutions, challenges, deadlines.

Then, it’s a time for celebration

Well, hello Christmas! We’re surrounded by year-end festivity. The streets are brightly lit. Red-green-silver and white are everywhere. The house is clean (No, it isn’t always), the tree is up, lights (which I had been intending to put up for Diwali) are finally alight and blinking.

And the weather is perfect

The best part of the weather cooling down is that I can leave my hair open. 

*Big-time vanity alert!*

But really, my hair frustrations are at an all-time low. There is such relief to have no sweat trickling down my back, plastering it to my neck, filling me with the urge to tie it up. The monsoon humidity that frizzes up my hair, making it look like a live-action electrical experiment, has also departed. I can be at my sleek and sophisticated (?) best for a few months.

Back home the cold months get a bit too cold but here in Pune the weather is not too hot, not too cold, just right as our childhood pal Goldilocks would put it.

Of course there’s food

Food tastes better in winters, period! 

Soups taste phenomenal and the rating of hot ginger chai goes up multiple notches.

When we were younger and vegetables made seasonal appearances, winter ones were my favourite. Even now when we get everything all year round, I find the matar is sweeter, the moolis crunchier. Oooh and those long red carrots and scarlet beets, to be made into salads, halwas and raitas, yum!

Lastly, it’s my birthday month

Yay!

Grand birthday celebrations are not my thing; nor do I mind if my friends forget to wish me. I am at that point in my life (I think) when friendships have solidified into lasting bonds that have little to do with a birthday wish.

That said, I am immensely grateful and very happy when people do remember. Also, there are some friends who I speak with only twice a year – on their birthdays and mine. So that’s something to look forward to.

I have designated December as the month of self-care. So I am doing rounds of the doctor’s clinic for all niggling health issues I have ignored through the year. I got myself a new pair of glasses and visits to the salon are on the cards for last-minute denting painting.

That’s what December is all about. By the end of it, I am a whole new, improved and spruced-up version, ready to step into the new year.

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