How to Have Peaceful New Year’s Holidays at Home

Here’s to Celebrating New Year’s Holidays Peacefully at Home

Home is Where the Party Is

It’s that glamourous time of the year when most conversations circle around the most happening parties to go to, who will be there, how to get there, what to wear. However, if you find yourself wanting to stay within the cosy interiors of your home this holiday season, and close to your family and closest friends, you might be on your way to having a peaceful New Year’s celebration at home.

The Art of Celebration

Though it is not a popular idea, and lacks the conventional glamour of all those party photos on our Instagram feed that we are going to see in the weeks following the New Year’s eve, it is a fabulous idea, nonetheless, and more people are drawing towards it, for it allows you to rest, spend quality time with people you love, and making healthy choices, and whether it is at home or at a spectacular destination away from home, that’s what holidays are all about—love, love, and more love.

So let’s talk about how it is possible to celebrate your holidays peacefully at home.

A Feast of Health and Memories

Food is the most quintessential element of a celebration. Food is how humans have always celebrated.

It’s a good thing we have to eat food at least 3 times a day as it constantly reminds us to practice celebrating the life we have, and the time we have on earth. Staying at home, you can either order take-out, or put on your apron, and get creative chopping, grilling, baking—it’s your choice.

This is the time to treat yourself to those gorgeous feasts that you love, and if you have been eating mindfully the whole year, then you most certainly should reward yourself to that feast.

Perhaps, you have had a very busy year and have not had the time to eat healthy, or if you are a foodie and have a global taste palette, then you might find the restaurants are not as satisfying as your homemade feasts. When you cook, not only do you control the quality of the ingredients you are using, you can also customise your food with all those ingredients to make it exactly how you want it.

Be it learning new recipes from youtube vloggers from around the world, smartly shopping for groceries, being silly dancing in the kitchen as you make something scrumptious, and aesthetically making memories as you plate your beautiful creations, and sharing it with the people we love—the whole process of nourishing ourselves from ideation to consumption adds manifold to our merriment.

“There is no love sincerer than the love of food.”   -George Bernard Shaw

A Full House, Full of Love

Twelve months have gone by, and after having gone through all the ups and downs that life inevitably throws at us, we are all here, safe and healthy, and that is plenty to thank for.

As the world slips into holiday mode, it is a wonderful time to reach out to the people we care about, which is usually our family and close friends, and get together for a house party, catch up over backyard barbeque and drinks, a movie in the lounge, or over any hobby of your common interest, or to just sit together and read.

If you have someone that you can spend long hours of quiet time with, then you have something valuable and recognising that is what makes life sweet.

Holiday season is a time when a lot of emotions come up, so if you want to keep it peaceful, you might benefit from gathering in smaller groups, perhaps sticking to one-on-one meetings if you crave those, almost out of fashion heart-to-hearts. In any case, there is certainly wisdom in deliberately choosing who to spend our time with, holiday season or not.

“One of the most important things you can do on this earth is to let people know they are not alone.”   Shannon L.Alder

A Party of One

If you are not able to visit your family, or they are not able to visit you, and if your friends and colleagues have gone away for this New Year’s holidays, do not despair. As hard as it can be during the holidays to stay alone, know that there is great bliss in solitude.

There is freedom and peace, self-love and self-discovery in solitude. All of life is available to you in solitude, and you can spend all of your time exactly as you want to.

It is a great time to catch up on your rest, reading, watchlists, and even some household chores if you enjoy that.

With so many possibilities of finding interesting content, thanks to the internet, there is no chance to be bored, or feel lonely.

Beware, however, of mindless scrolling of the social media, because looking at photographs of other people’s seemingly perfect lives as they raise toasts to the (New Year’s) holidays, might dampen your spirits.

Remember that those photographs are choreographed for the purpose of keeping up with the demands of social media, and that there is no need to compare your life to anyone else’s, especially to their edited photo stories on social media.

Instead, the time you spend treating yourself to your home spa, doing your hair and nails, reading and knitting, binging on movies and tv shows, partying alone to your all time favourite songs and dancing alone, spending your afternoons in your pajamas eating good food, is nothing short of glamorous, even if you are not posting photo stories about them for the world to see.

“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.”   Michel de Montaigne.

Balance is Key

This New Year’s holiday season, whether you are staying at your home, or are going away to a nature resort for a peaceful getaway as you spend your time nurturing yourself, you might find it useful to keep your home as clean as possible, and maintain some semblance of a routine to bring a nice rhythm to your holidays. Some basic rules like doing the dishes right away and wiping the floors once a day could keep your holiday mood uninterrupted and your time in the comfort of your home memorably peaceful.

Cheers!