Guest Post: A New Year's Tradition

Hey Everybody! Hope y'all are having a wonderful holiday.  I'm sure that wherever I am right now, I'm FREEZING.  My girl Andrea, who is NOT traveling for the holidays this year agreed to step in for me today to tell you about one of her Holiday Traditions!

Take it away Miss A...

Hey, everybody! I'm Andrea, from Good Girl Gone Redneck!Thanks to my friend Single Mom in the South, I'm here to tell you a little bit about myself and my holiday traditions.

This "tradition" is actually my husband's ... and it's not dealing with what we do on your general and more celebrated holidays. If you want to see how we celebrate Christmas and Chanukah, you can head over to my place to read about our Blended Holiday Household.

But today I am going to talk to you a little bit about New Year's Day. We don't do anything cool like eat black-eyed-peas (I gotta feelin' ...), though that is a huge tradition here in the South. We don't do anything crazy like take a plunge into the ocean like the Polar Bear Clubs do (even though the most well-known club is located in my old 'hood --- Brooklyn!).

Nope, we do something much more simple and that feels so much more sane. We go to the bookstore.

Now, if you know me, you know I love books. I live off of books. I could read every minute of every day -- if I didn't have a three-year-old daughter around to stop me, of course. But, as I mentioned, this tradition is actually one that my husband brought to me. And although most of his reading takes place when his nose is buried into some pretty little books named Ruby or Perl, he truly likes to spend New Year's Day at the bookstore. And who am I to question such a wonderful tradition? Especially when it usually leads to me getting the hot beverage of my choice, and maybe a new calendar/planner, even a couple of books if I'm in the mood! Or have any money left after the holidays!

So at some point after noon we bundle ourselves up, get in the car and drive either 5 minutes to the nearest Barnes and Noble, or head a little bit farther out to the closest Border's. It all depends on the mood. Because the two stores truly do have a different feel to them. In my bookstore experience, anyway.

And for a better example of how we're actually creating a bookstore snob in our house, a short anecdotal story of our little one, who, one day while backseat driving, decided to ask if we'd be going to the REAL bookstore or the not real one. Hubby and I looked at one another until she proceeded to go into detail that the not real one was the one with the horses next to the train. She was talking about Books-A-Million, which has since closed it's doors. Sigh. All it takes is one sassy little three-year-old ...

Anyway, enjoy your holidays -- and most especially find yourself a way to kick off the new year without having to worry about what you're eating, whether or not you're working out enough or how you're going to do the 900 things that are ahead of you. Just take the day, grab a scarf and a toasty hat, and head on over to the nearest bookstore. Whether "real" or "fake," whether everyone knows your name or you're just a face in the crowd, you'll find loads of people waiting for you to disappear with behind those doors. From Aibileen and Minny to Emmy and Lulu, you are bound to find just the right friends to hang out with - if only for an hour or two!