After the flurry of holiday shopping, celebrations, and family gatherings, the week between Christmas and New Year’s softens the intensity of daily life. Time behaves differently. It feels suspended, a pause between endings and beginnings. Emails slow. Offices empty. Mornings unfold without the usual press of obligations. There are shared movies and snowy mornings. Fireplaces glow, and families linger.
For many, however, it’s also a blur of leftovers, returns, shopping, scrolling, streaming, and loose plans. Before you know it, it’s a new year, you’re back to work, and you’re wondering where the time went—and whether there’s more to life than this.
Contemplative scientists who study attention, emotion, and ritual say pauses in routine hold far more potential than we realize. The peculiar rhythm of these days—quiet streets, stalled routines, and reshuffled priorities—creates a psychological opening we rarely experience in modern life.
The Space Between Doing and Being
Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist and founder of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, has spent decades exploring how contemplative practices reshape emotional patterns and cognitive habits. The shift many people feel during the winter holidays is something he immediately recognizes.
“It’s a great topic,” he says. “The idea of the in-between is so powerful…one of the things we often talk about is the mind going from a state of doing to one of being.” The reason the shift feels difficult, he notes, is simple: habit. “Most of the time, for most people, the mode of doing is the dominant mode of our mind, and it’s like changing the course of a river that’s been constantly flowing in one direction.”
Major holidays disrupt that flow.
“You can think of this period between Christmas and New Year’s as a psychological affordance,” Davidson explains—an environmental condition that increases “the likelihood for these moments of quiet, for this shift from doing to being,” simply because our routines are interrupted. The disruption can feel awkward, but it’s also what makes the week so potent.
Crucially, Davidson adds, the power of the in-between doesn’t belong only to late December. We encounter liminal spaces all the time, though we rarely notice them. “There’s a gap between thoughts,” he says. There is a gap “between an inhalation and an exhalation.” They are invitations hiding in plain sight.
Those pauses matter because they loosen the grip of what Davidson calls the “narrative in our minds,” the ongoing story we unconsciously tell ourselves about who we are. That story “is literally shaping how we perceive reality,” he says. Yet “most people, most of the time, are not only unaware of the narrative, but they’re unaware that they actually have a narrative.”
Quiet periods allow us to notice the story—and to question it. “These periods of quiet enable us to notice that we do have a narrative…and this loosens up the grip, if you will, that this narrative has on our perception of the world.”
Ritual and Rest
Psychologist David DeSteno, who directs the Social Emotions Lab at Northeastern University and hosts the podcast How God Works, sees similar dynamics in intentional rest. In one episode, he describes the Jewish weekly ritual of Shabbat, a full day of rest and rejuvenation from sunset Friday until Saturday night, as a “spiritual technology.” When we remove ourselves from routine and distraction, he explains, we create the conditions for presence, connection, and renewal.
The power of stopping, he says, is that it must be intentional. “We are too conditioned by our current society to have very short attention spans, to be very focused on our devices, to hold up work as a sign of productivity and virtue.” A true pause requires design. When Shabbat works well, he notes, “it is a way to intentionally remove ourselves from those daily rhythms.”
But the point isn’t punishment. “It’s not to see it as deprivation, but to see it as an opportunity for renewal,” DeSteno says. The time is meant for embodied nourishment: good meals, walks, crafts, music, connection—the “experience of others.”
On his podcast episode “A Holiday From Tech Addiction,” tech Shabbat advocate Rabbi Sydney Mintz describes Shabbat beyond just rest. Advocating for sensory delight, including nature, song, intimacy, food, and pleasure.
These rituals curate emotional life in a way that brings people back to themselves and into connection with others.
The week between Christmas and New Years can function as a kind of secular parallel—a Sabbath built into the modern calendar. “For a lot of people,” DeSteno notes, “it’s a time when you don’t have to go to work or at least keep the same hours…when things feel like they’re moving slower.” The very definition of liminality, he explains, is stepping outside the normal. And when that happens, we’re given a chance to see our lives more clearly.
“The point of liminal periods isn’t just that they’re a respite,” he says. “The point…is that they allow us to think about what we’re doing and to carry forward something from that learning.”
Small Rituals That Anchor Us
Both scientists emphasize the value of tiny, ordinary rituals.
Davidson recommends beginning with a simple moment of reflection before a meal: “To simply reflect on the people it required to have food on your plate”—the farmers, cooks, workers who transported it—“it really is quite amazing.” That small moment “can be nourishment for the soul.” He does it “every single meal,” often without anyone knowing.
DeSteno suggests giving the week a bit of structure: deciding what you’re stepping back from, and what you’re stepping toward. That might mean a tech pause after dinner, a walk, a small act of service, or lighting a candle each evening as a way to mark the in-between as different from ordinary time.
For some people, unstructured time feels unsettling—too quiet, too revealing. DeSteno understands why. “Sometimes it is uncomfortable to sit with yourself and with your thoughts if you don’t have those distractions,” he says. Without the usual busyness, “you’re going to feel adrift.” The antidote isn’t filling the time but gently guiding it:
turning toward rituals of connection, gratitude, awe, and presence.
New Year’s “Aspirations”
Both scientists recommend approaching the new year gently. Instead of rigid resolutions, Davidson suggests aspirations: modest, reachable intentions that support well-being. “Rather than, for example, trying to make a resolution that I’m going to meditate for 45 minutes a day…say, I’m going to try to remember to express my gratitude and appreciation to people on a regular basis.” Aspirations, he says, are “a more hopeful way of presenting things to ourselves.”
Maybe that’s why so many traditions take place in this season, holding space at the edge of the year. They remind us that transformation rarely happens in the rush of the daily disconnected hustle and bustle. It happens in the quiet, in-between, where something truthful has room to rise.
A holiday pause helps us feel connected again. It happens through the rituals we keep, the gatherings we choose, or the humanity we share by standing near others during moments of awe and wonder. With that clarity, we step into the new year a little more present and a little more open to the people, practices, and possibilities that help us become who we’re meant to be.
Alene Dawson is a Southern California-based writer known for her intelligent and popular features, cover stories, interviews, and award-winning publications. She’s a regular contributor to the LA Times.
