Five Must-Watch Titles for New Year’s Eve (Unless You’re Actually Out Doing Something–Doing Something is Better)

Rudolph’s Shiny New Year

Nobody I talk to ever knows about this one, though I’d say it’s arguably one of the best Rankin & Bass movies. Way better than the first Rudolph. It’s got that fantastic old-school stop-motion thing going on, and Red Skelton plays Father Time, and there’s a big vulture named Eon the Terrible and a cave man and a knight and a dude with a clock for a chest and all sorts of good stuff.

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New Year’s Dreaming

The Holiday Hollow

This year, the first night of Hanukkah fell on Christmas Eve. That’s pretty cool, and not just because the two holidays coincided and we could all hold hands and sing together. It’s cool because, if you celebrate Hanukkah, you get to leap over the holiday hollow this year: that abyss between Christmas/Hanukkah and New Year’s when you kind of don’t know what to do with yourself and you feel like you’re falling and falling but the fall is so long that it drags on, so you find yourself wishing for the splat of the pavement if only to make the falling end. Then you hit New Year’s and, bruised as you might be from the impact, you manage to find a few toe holds or even a staircase back into real life.

Perhaps that’s a bit dramatic, but you know the time I mean. You might still have family in town, or time off of work. You’re all done celebrating but you don’t necessarily want to tear down the decorations. You’re waiting. You might have a lot of New Year’s resolutions, but you don’t feel like you have to enact them yet since, technically, it’s not the new year. Or maybe you have no resolutions. Maybe you’re just bored.

But this year, I’ve decided not to let it get to me. I’m going to start phasing in a few of my New Year’s resolutions (eating more fruit and veg, using my Waterpik every night) while phasing out my holiday behaviors (binge eating peanut brittle, falling asleep with my makeup on). I’m going to take down the Christmas tree because, God help me, I cannot chase the girl away from it even one more time without going insane. Instead of shuffling around waiting for the new year, I’m going to get busy preparing for it, so that on January 1 I can relax and hang out, knowing that everything is all prepped for a wonderful 2017 (inasmuch as I can control such things, which I realize is very little–but, God grant me the serenity and all that).

How about you? How are you spending the last week of 2016? Any tips on getting back to real life? Or do you avoid real life as long as possible?