When No one Wants to Reflect on New Year's Day

This post is for the hard-core religious navel-gazer community out there.

You know, those of us whose idea of the perfect New Year’s Eve is a long soaking in a thought provoking book or Scripture, hours of journaling and prayer, and anguishing over our spiritual lives and the state of the world. Preferably with a cup of tea by the fire.

But because God has a sense of humor, He often gives us someone in our inner circle (i.e. a spouse, child, friend, parent) who is NOT contemplative. Their idea of New Year’s fun is a 48 hour binge on the Marvel movies, a cold-plunge into a frozen lake, or deep cleaning their basement.

The “non-contemplative” in my family (who will remain anonymous), essentially takes her Christmas money every year and flies to some foreign city for New Year’s Eve to celebrate, because she finds us incredibly boring. Even though we do party every year at our friend Dan’s house, drinking mulled wine around outdoor heaters while he makes us fabulous pizza, and popping the 12 traditional Spanish grapes at midnight. I mean, we stay up til at least 12:30 am.

But this year, the non-contemplative needs that money to pay bills, and she’s stuck with us to ring in the new year. So she’s saying things like:  “What exactly are we doing to celebrate, because I do NOT want to do reflection and be all serious as we go into the new year.”

In an inspired and conciliatory effort to create a bridge between the desert fathers/mothers and the Gen Z contingency in our family, last year my husband came up with a new family activity on New Year’s Day.

We were asked to share:

• 5 Favorite Photos from 2025

• 4 Special Experiences (meals, places, adventures)

• 3 Video clips (i.e. real life or favorite reels from the year)

• 2 Top Songs from your year

• 1 thing you are most grateful for to take into the New Year.

We did this as a family during the first week of the new year, and our first run was a smashing hit.

We did, however, allow creative license with the categories. For example, I am a complete music illiterate. My music memory might even fall into the disability category— I can’t remember songs, lyrics, artists, or albums. Not that I don’t listen to music. Somehow I accidentally got logged into my daughter’s Spotify account this year, and completely messed up her music algorhythim and music stats for the year. Her top album listened to in 2025:  Gregorian Chants. (Sorry, Bella!)

At any rate, you may need to tweak the categories based on your own interests:  movies you saw, books you read, podcasts you loved, etc.  I chose to share two significant prayer images I had in the year, instead of two songs.

This really was such a fun evening of sharing to start our new year! We learned lots of things about each other, and yes, even deep heart things. But it wasn’t packaged in our generational black and white thinking of “highs and lows” or our performance driven reflections of what I did well and where I need to grow.

And that’s really what I’m learning from my Gen Z’ers. Their lives have so much more integration than mine did at their age. Their definitions of “spiritual” moments are not always confined to contemplation, they are embodied realities. They find God in cold plunges and cooking, beauty and simple life moments. They are pursuing their emotional health and spirituality with thoughtful interactions with the world around them. And they are wrestling with meaning and purpose in raw and honest ways, and with way less shame.

I tell you this as an encouragement to all of you out there worried because your adult children aren’t having a quiet time or regularly attending church. Do not assume these kids are not finding God in many other places.

So I offer you a new activity to try on this year with your inner circle. My kids are actually putting their responses into a powerpoint. And I’m offering a song myself (and it won’t even be a Gregorian chant!).

And the truth is, that even contemplatives sometimes need a break from deep reflection. We may be in the middle of an unfolding crisis, we don’t yet have any kind of perspective of what God is doing in our lives, or we are unhooking from spiritual performance review. These questions will remind us of many of the beautiful moments of your year— the things that gave us joy in a hard season, the people who enriched our lives, and the powerful ways God spoke to us through a song or special meal.

Don’t worry, I’m still doing my reflecting and soul-searching, just not forcing my family to do it with me. (ha!) But I’m learning how to release the old and relax into the new with way less intensity and determination to make sure I’ve mined every bit of the old year for gold before I move forward.

This year, may God continue to give us creativity to learn how bridge the generations, humility to learn from those different from us, and love that has eyes to see the beauty in the different ways we experience God.

Happy New Year!

If you want my meaty, soul searching end-of-year questions, you can see my earlier post here.

And feel free to write in the comments other fun ways of connecting around the new Year.