The Lost Week of December

The kitchen clock says 9:14, but the sun is still a pale disc behind the bare maple in the neighbor’s yard. A woman in a bathrobe stands at the counter, eating a slice of ham on a dinner roll. The glaze has dried into a sweet armor, but the meat is still good. A mug of coffee goes cold beside her, and on the table a stack of Christmas cards waits for addresses that will never be written. The radio plays a song from a distant year, and the host takes a call from a woman who says she doesn’t know what day it is. The host says he doesn’t either. This is the week after Christmas, and it has its own rules.

The days between Christmas and New Year’s are not like the days after any other holiday. There is no return to the office, no back-to-school, no first day of the rest of the year. Instead, there is a gap, a kind of anteroom, a long Sunday that lasts for a week. The alarm clock is off. The school bus route is empty. The office phone goes straight to a message that says the office is closed until further notice, and the further notice is a point on a calendar that feels fictional.

Ask a neighbor what day it is, and the answer comes after a pause. It’s the twenty-ninth, or the thirtieth, or something in between. The exact date is a dull fact, like the temperature of a room no one intends to leave. Children who have been out of school for the break have lost all sense of the weekday. Their parents feel it too, but they are too tired to care. The newspaper is thin, and the crossword is missing, and the television news is replaying the same story it told the day before.

The mail comes later than usual, or not at all. The mail carrier’s truck moves down the street as if it has all the time in the world, which, for the next few days, it does. The bank’s lobby is dark, but the drive-through window is open, staffed by someone who is very patient. The hardware store has a handwritten sign taped inside the door, and the man behind the counter is sorting loose nuts and bolts into jars, a job that has needed doing since August. Nobody hurries, because hurry is a thing that belongs to other weeks.

The Low, Flat Light

The sun at noon is barely higher than it was at nine. The solstice has passed, but the days are still short, and January is not yet ready to be trusted. This is December’s week, the deepest pocket of the year, when the light lies low and sideways across the fields. In the North, snow is piled in the corners of parking lots, grey and gritty, and the sun has no heat. In the South, the dormant grass is a pale brown, and the oaks hold their leaves, rustling like paper bags in the wind. Even the deserts are cold at night.

The cold is the same cold that has been hanging around since Thanksgiving, but now it has settled in for a longer stay. It is the cold of a house that will not warm up until spring. The sidewalks are brittle, and the streams are edged with ice. In the country, the frozen ruts in the driveway are hard as iron. People walk their dogs in the middle of the afternoon, bundled in the same coats they wore on the morning of the twenty-fifth. The dogs snuffle in the leaves, and the humans watch their breath come out in small clouds. The sky is a particular December sky: not grey, not blue, but somewhere in between, as if it were also waiting.

The shadows are long and don’t seem to move. A tree’s shadow stretches across a lawn and up the side of a house, and it stays there for hours. At four in the afternoon, people turn on lights. The streetlights come on by themselves, and the porch lights glow at the top of the afternoon. The day does not end so much as give up. And then the night comes, enormous and black, and the cold tightens its grip. This is the quiet time, and it is so quiet it has a hum.

The House Holds Its Breath

In the living room, the Christmas tree is still up. It has been up for ten days, and the needles have begun to fall, a thin rust-colored layer on the skirt at the base. The water in the stand is low. The lights are still on, but they look tired. No one wants to take the tree down, because taking the tree down means the holidays are officially over, and the year is officially used up. But the holidays are already over, and the year is already used up, and the tree stands in the corner like a guest who has stayed a day too long.

Leftovers fill the refrigerator: the ham, the turkey, the spiral-sliced thing, the mashed potatoes in a plastic container, the gravy in a jar. The fruitcake sits on the counter, untouched except for a thumbprint in its cellophane. A plate of cookies has been reduced to a plate of crumbs and a few broken stars. The recycling bin in the garage is full of wrapping paper and cardboard and a bow that is still intact. No one will take it to the curb until they are absolutely sure the week is over.

The stores are open, but they are not doing business. The mall parking lot is a slate of empty spaces. The department store has a returns desk with a short, patient line. The clerks are polite and tired, and they have run out of the small talk required for a week like this. The grocery store is stocked, but the aisles are empty, and the cashier stands idle, flipping through a magazine. No one is buying anything, and no one is selling anything, and the whole country sits for a moment with its hands in its pockets.

The Turn

New Year’s Eve comes as a kind of duty. The parties are planned, but the week’s quiet has made them feel like a rumor. People go anyway. The living rooms are lit, the appetizers are out, the television is on. At midnight, the ball drops, and everyone says happy new year to the same people they said merry Christmas to, and then they go home. It is not a loud night. It is the gentlest of all possible transitions.

New Year’s Day is perhaps the quietest day of the year. The streets are empty. The college football bowl games play on televisions in dark living rooms, where people lie on couches in a state somewhere between sleep and attention. The mail does not run. The banks are closed. The restaurants that are open are open for lunch only. Nobody does anything, because there is nothing to do. The week is, at last, at its end, but the end is not a sharp line. It is a taper, a fade.

And then the first Monday of January arrives, and the alarm clocks go off. The trash cans roll to the curb again. The school buses run, and the office lights come on, and the calendar resumes its ordinary grip. But for a few more December nights, the world is still loose. The kitchen clock says one thing, the sun says another, and no one can say for certain what day it is. That is the particular blessing of this week, the one week of the year that asks for nothing and gives nothing, and is exactly what it seems: a long breath held while the year turns.