Why the Week Between Christmas and New Year Feels So Strange

For most of the year, time is structured before we ever make plans. Work calendars shape our days. School schedules define the weeks. Meetings, deadlines, commutes, errands, and obligations claim entire blocks of attention. Even when we are not doing much, we are often orienting ourselves to what we should be doing next. Time becomes a sequence of responsibilities, and we learn to experience it as something we spend, protect, or lose.

Then the holidays arrive and something shifts. Many offices slow down or close. Expectations soften. Normal productivity rhythms pause. Social rules change. Some people travel. Some people host. Some people retreat. The clock keeps moving, but the usual demands are temporarily suspended. The result is disorienting because the structure that normally tells us what time is for has gone quiet.

Specifically, the week between Christmas and New Year has a reputation, even crowned with an internet title, “Gooch” week: the aimless days of leftovers and confusion, named after the ever-mysterious perineum (aka the “gooch”). It’s a potentially vulgar word, but it’s also weirdly perfect. The “gooch” (internet slang aside) points straight to the perineum: the sensitive area of skin between the genitals and the anus. In many traditions, this region is associated with the root chakra, our etheric anchor point for grounding, stability, and survival.

The obvious connection is symbolic: the root chakra is tied to the earth, the roots, and the most instinctual parts of being human. It’s about safety, steadiness, and finding peace in the body: foundations that shape how we move through time and space.

The less obvious connection is astrological. The root chakra is associated with Saturn, the planet linked to time, structure, boundaries, and the architecture of reality. Saturn rules Capricorn, and that’s exactly the season the week between Christmas and New Year’s always falls in.

So the idea of “Gooch Week” landing in that liminal stretch of the calendar becomes more interesting: astrologically, it arrives during Capricorn season, under Saturn’s influence, the same symbolic ruler tied to grounding and the root. In that sense, the week becomes a natural threshold: a quiet reset of structure, orientation, and intention before the Gregorian year turns.

And it’s worth remembering: time, as we measure it, is a human-made system. It isn’t the same thing as rhythm. Rhythm lives in the body, the earth, and cycles, and I’ll be speaking more about that in 2026, and at my New Year’s 2026 Workshop.

Instead of entering 2026 distracted, exhausted, or swept up in the usual noise, you’ll begin with intention.

I’ve created a powerful New Year meditation to help you align with the year’s highest frequency — so you start clear, grounded, and open to abundance. This is a space to be present with yourself, to listen, and to choose the energy you’re carrying forward.

During Gooch Week, we joke that it isn’t a real week. We forget what day it is. We lose track of our routines. We feel unusually tired or strangely restless. We feel both behind and ahead at the same time, like time is moving too fast and not moving at all.

But this isn’t just a holiday haze. It’s a pattern, repeating year after year, because this stretch of days does something rare: it loosens the grip of the systems that normally hold our time in place.

When our calendars aren’t as full as usual, we’re left with something we haven’t been trained to inhabit, time that’s open enough to feel unfamiliar.

Some people experience that openness as relief. Others experience it as anxiety. Many feel both at once. The mind, used to being directed, starts scanning for what it “should” do next. The body, accustomed to urgency, struggles to downshift. And the nervous system, shaped by schedules, doesn’t automatically trust a gap.

This is why the in-between week can feel oddly intense. It is not always about what is happening externally, it is about what becomes visible internally when the outside pressure changes. We confront questions we usually do not have to face. We notice our dependence on routine. We feel the discomfort of unstructured hours. We discover how quickly we reach for distraction when nothing is demanding us. We observe how hard it can be to rest when rest is available.

This is also the time of year when endings and beginnings sit in the same room: Christmas is behind us, and New Year’s is ahead. The year isn’t over in lived reality — we’re still in the same life — but culturally, we’re told we’re crossing a threshold. That creates a subtle pressure to reflect, evaluate, resolve, and rewrite the story of ourselves. For some, it brings regret or urgency, a surge of hope, the itch to start fresh. For others, it stirs a quiet grief they can’t quite name. The calendar isn’t a force, exactly, but it is a mirror, and it makes us look.

This is why the days can feel stretchy and compressed at the same time. On one hand, there is less structure, so hours can feel long. On the other hand, there is more meaning projected onto the new year, so time can feel like it is accelerating toward a reset. Both sensations can be true because time is not only a measurement, it is also an experience shaped by attention, emotion, and the social world we inhabit.

For example, during this week some people have more choices, more help, and fewer logistical burdens. Others are doing emotional labor, caregiving, travel coordination, or financial prioritizing. For some, the week is a pause, and for others, it is a performance. The cultural narrative is rest, but the lived reality can be effort. That mismatch makes time feel even stranger.

If this week makes you feel slightly confused, you are not doing anything wrong. You are noticing something real. You are noticing how much of our relationship with time depends on structure, permission, and shared agreement. You are noticing what happens when those agreements change, even temporarily. You are noticing that time is not only something you live in. Time is also something you negotiate with the systems around you and the patterns inside you.

There is a temptation to fill the gap immediately. People over schedule. People scroll. People shop. People drink. People keep moving so they do not have to feel the strange openness. Another option is to treat the week as a diagnostic. You can watch what your mind does when time is less claimed. You can notice what makes you feel safe in the open space and what makes you feel restless. You can observe what you reach for when you do not have to be anywhere. You can learn something about yourself that is hard to see during the rest of the year.

The week between Christmas and New Year is a rare moment when the usual structure loosens enough for us to feel that shaping process in real time.

If this week feels wild, do not dismiss it. There is intelligence in the sensation. You are standing in a cultural pause that reveals how much of your experience of time is constructed and how much of it is yours. That is worth noticing. That is worth exploring. And it may be the most honest way to begin a new year.