“Twixmas” or “betwixtmas” is too twee, and “interstice” sounds too much like bad cystitis. I don’t have a good name for the time between Christmas and new year, and I know everyone is not fortunate enough to have reasons to love it.

But for those of us lucky enough to have free time with people we like and trust, this period signals a cosy kind of mild chaos where normal schedules are suspended, and no one is quite sure what day it is. For many women, in particular, it can be a time when we stop berating ourselves for our body’s flaws.

Anyone who still believes the truism normally attributed to Wallis Simpson that you can never be too rich or too thin, has never seen the internet pile-ons on unfortunate female celebrities now sporting a chin so pointy it could be held between a toddler’s thumb and forefinger. And being fat in the age of Ozempic apparently signals a criminal level of wilful self-neglect. But during this time, in that evocative phrase of Mary Oliver’s, we can “let the soft animal of [our] body” just be.

Being grateful for our bodies and the way they enable us to experience the world can be an act of quiet rebellion, and not just because of the ever-changing, arbitrary standards of what constitutes an acceptable body type.

And given some of the ideas emanating from Silicon Valley, the internet body fascists begin to look moderate. This year, Ross Douthat........

© The Irish Times