Getting on with the Business of WInter

I am known as something of a holiday curmudgeon. This is not an entirely unfair characterization: New Year's Eve is Everyone is Having Fun Except You Night; Valentine's is Prove You Love Me Day. Independence Day is loud, and the people who most need a day off usually have to work Labor Day. Thanksgiving is okay as long as there are no TVs nearby - parades and football bore the arse right off me. See what I mean? Curmudgeon, right?

So when I choose to be alone on Christmas Day, the assumption is more curmudgeonry. (I just made up that word. Do you like it?) Though it's true I don't like to participate in the cultural frenzy associated with Christmas, my solitude is not sulking. I take advantage of the day the world stops as a moment of quiet contemplation.

My contemplation may take a different form than most; work is my meditation. I do projects, ones I have been wanting to do at least all year. This year I have three in mind, though obviously will not get these all done in one day. Or even week. One is small, one is big, one is...only bigger, because it is more daunting.

• Small: Ceramic numbers, for my house. This is easy, it just takes getting around to it. 
• Bigger: Refinish my front hall stairs. This is a ton of work but nothing new to learn: I already know how to scrape and sand and paint. Every day for more than ten years I have looked at theses stairs wishing they looked better but despite my finest efforts of waiting them out and looking at staircases on Pinterest, they have refused to refinish themselves. 

  

  A start

• Biggest: A mosaic for my entry hall. This is not a thing I have ever done before, although I have some ideas on how to approach it. The design I can handle; the ceramics are old hat; but the installation - that's where I will be challenged. 

Though all appears cold and dead, the real business of winter is renewal. It's time to be getting on with it.