HAPPY NEW YEAR AND GOOD WISHES FOR 2026 by Penny Dolan

January 1st 2026.

New Year has always carried a strange aura. As a child, I sensed a thread of wistful melancholy running through all the glitter and jollity, and for decades the opening notes of ‘Old Land Syne’ brought me to ugly tears. Why and when, I wonder, did that stop? And yet it did.

I do still love that magical, illusory sense of pause as the year ends. I am caught by the odd trick of the empty calendar, the unmarked pages of one's new diary or journal. For a moment - and oh-so-very-lucky me, I know – there’s a sense of peace and opportunity and hope out there in the clear days ahead. I hope the new year will be good to you too.

Meanwhile, back to the post I originally wrote for today . . .

Choices, choices.

This coming Saturday - January 3rd - groups of Young Farmers will drive around our streets, collecting up unwanted Christmas trees. The trees, stripped and bare, are cast out of their homes the night before. They loll, unwanted, against hedges and gate-posts, like New Year revellers that never quite made it home.

Early that morning, the Young Farmer’s truck and trailer will come rumbling down the cul-de sac. A group of sturdy, still-almost-young men will stride alongside, throwing the flailing trees into the back of the giant trailer in the manner of legendary giants. The trees are crushed and stacked together by a couple of bolder Young Farmers, standing heroically upright in the trailer. In they come, the YF, and  off they go, taking all the discarded trees off to be shredded and used for animal bedding or something equally rural and useful.

The YF are doing a good thing. The unwanted Christmas trees raise money: people make a donation for every tree collected, with the funds split between the Young Farmer’s Association own support services and a large local Hospice. All of this is good and noble, and all is well,

But oh, something in me rebels against that morning. January 3rd? Why do the Young Farmer’s chose such an early date? (I know, I know.)

I recently saw a social media boast about ‘took my tree down on Boxing Day’ and it seemed so untimely to me. So very careless of custom and tradition, which I like to believe, is not necessarily the same as the huge marketing pushes that start around October. Perhaps their tree went up on November 6th?

From my ancient lady point of view, we should not be taking our Christmas trees down so swiftly. Trees disappeared late on 5th January, known as Twelfth Night, the eve before 6th January, the Epiphany or 'Three Kings' Day, when the Infant was shown to the world. You could keep those emptying branches glittering away until 2nd February, Candlemas, and the end of the Christmas season. 

So The Young Farmers are coming, for me, much too early! I am stuck here, pondering. The third or not the third?

I do love our Christmas tree and don’t want it to depart. Do I give in to rough convenience, strip the branches of light and glitter, and shove the poor thing out into the cold and dark, like a feeble Hans Christian Andersen story extra?

Or should My Tree stand dressed and lovely, with all its lights shining brightly, with me alongside, resolutely drinking my morning coffee as the tumbrils go by. Tonight, that scene, that version is where my heart is. I can make the charity donation anyway.

However, somewhere, I hear a small, practical voice, whispering firmly about how extremely well pine needles embed themselves into car upholstery . .

Choices, choices!

Penny Dolan

PS. The 'tree' piece above was inspired, at quite an angle, by the following:
‘The photograph of the past changes with time and yet it remains the same, In other words, a tree is a tree until you know how or when it was planted or by whom. Once you know then it is no longer a tree. It is symbolic. It is a series of stories. It has a truth.’ Lemn Sissay.

Quoted in ‘Write It All Down: How to put your life on the page’ by Cathy Rentsenbrink.