🥟🎄 December 2024: Living in Abundance

Dumplings! Yesterday we decorated our Christmas tree (a Scotch pine this year instead of the usual fir, highly recommend) – and this morning there’s a fresh skin of snow on the ground. My parents fly in from Shanghai on Sunday and we have tentative plans, post-jetlag, to take Rufus to his first Santa visit. I’ve also regained the foresight to meal plan, and am cooking my way through some of the recipes on the NYT’s annual list.

I’m a bit behind on holiday shopping and generally prefer spur-of-the-moment gifts over obligatory ones (have I expressed this in the Sunday letter?). Julia’s the same way, so we decided this year to on the following gift strategy, adapted from a friend, for each other and Rufus:

Something you want
Something you need
An ornament
And something to read

I don’t always operate this way – in fact, I rarely operate this way – but on this Thursday morning, sunlight kissing the snow-crusted streets outside my office window, I feel very much like I’m living in abundance.