The new year usually arrives with lists: resolutions, goals, habits to start and stop. They're about the future, and often a little stern.
There's a gentler tradition worth reviving: the New Year's letter. Not a card with a printed greeting, but a real letter, written in the first days of January to one person you love, telling them honestly how your year was.
Why a letter, and why now
The turn of the year is a natural pause. The celebrations are over, the house is quieter, the light is starting to return. It's a moment when people have always looked back and taken stock. Writing that reflection to someone else, instead of to yourself, changes it. It becomes a conversation, not a judgment. And it often reminds you that your year held more good moments than you thought.
Who to write to
- A friend you didn't see enough this year. - A grandparent or parent who'd love to hear the details of your life. - A sibling who lives far away. - Someone who helped you through a difficult moment, perhaps without knowing it.
What to write
1. Where you are as you write. The room, the light, the season. 2. Three moments from your year. One joyful, one difficult, one ordinary but lovely. 3. Something you learned. Big or small. 4. Something you loved: a book, a place, a film, a painting, a habit. 5. A memory you share with them from this year, or one you wish you had. 6. What you're curious about in the year ahead. Not resolutions: curiosities. 7. Something you wish for them.
Make it a tradition
Write one every January, to the same person or to someone new each year. Ask them to write back. Over time, you'll build a correspondence that tells the story of your lives, year by year.
A letter, every month of the year
If you'd love to keep receiving letters long after January, the Letter & Magazine subscription sends you a letter and a postcard every month, with a meditation and a story about art, plus a seasonal issue of "(meditating) On Art". The year, told one letter at a time.
Remember to take as much time as you need, and meet me at the next one.
Love, Evi