Photo: Dreamstime

There should be a special name for this week between Christmas and New Year’s. We’ve just spent a month in holiday high, feeling happy at odd moments, eating too much, trying to come up with ways to surprise or delight loved ones, decorating our homes and businesses. If it’s been a well-paced holiday, by the time Christmas arrives, we are ready to let it come, then watch it go. We’re tired from the faster pace. We’re ready to start a diet, get back into a regular routine, start back on an exercise regime.

Then comes this stretch between the big one (Christmas day) and the new one (midnight, New Year’s eve). The week goes slower than any other week of the year. We’re trying to work up enthusiasm for our jobs and career, but still feeling the pull of holiday mode. We have a lot of food still in the house that can’t be around when 2014 begins. Many of us have vacation hours at home that beckon to our guilt centers with whispers of “use this time to clean out the cupboards.” We aren’t quite ready to call the holiday over, and the deadline before resolutions take effect has not been reached.

I guess we could call it Bridge Week—the days that connect the good and bad of 2013 with the hope of 2014.

Happy Bridge Week readers.  Here are a couple of ways to celebrate:

Instead of emptying your fridge into your mouth, chuck the food completely. That free ham may have saved beaucoup bucks on your Christmas dinner this year, but remember, it’s not a waste to throw it away if it’s just going to contribute to your waist.

Give yourself an hour a day to do something you rarely find time to do throughout the year. That could be as simple as a bubble bath or as complicated as beginning or continuing your novel/short story/memoirs. Too often we trip through life, letting our hours get filled up on the need-to-do’s things instead of recognizing the want-to-dos.

Call that person you kept saying you needed to get back in touch with last year. That reconnection brings something good from your past into your future.

Keep the spirit of the holiday alive. What makes us think that just because December 25 has come and gone, we shouldn’t think about those less fortunate? Bridge Week could be the week where we stop thinking about presents to relatives and think instead about gifts to the causes that matter to us.

What do you suggest?

Genilee Swope Parente