I hope you had a great Christmas 🎄 or Hanukkah 🕎 celebration, spent time with your family and enjoyed lots of good food.
We had the quintessential Xmas 🎄 Eve in the city – The Lotte hotel Christmas tree 🎄, St. Patrick’s Cathedral mass, Rockerfeller Center, The Peninsula hotel decorations, walk down Fifth Avenue, and then late lunch at Nougatine at Jean-George (it was delicious!). Christmas Day was quiet with just family and good homemade food (antipasto variety, veal spiedini, beef bolognese pasta, flourless chocolate cake), then lounging around watching movies.

2026 is upon us. As usual we all have a number of wishes for the new year that we hope will come true. Here’s my little story about what happens right before midnight.

New Year’s Wishes 🥂

On New Year’s Eve, New York City breathes in and holds it.

Snow from earlier in the day has melted into a silver sheen on the sidewalks, and Times Square glows like a second sun. The city hums—taxi horns, laughter, the scrape of boots, the low countdown anticipation that settles into everyone’s bones.

On Forty-Second Street, eight-year-old Matteo clutches his mother’s hand. His cheeks are red from the cold and excitement. He has never stayed up this late before. When his mother asks what he’ll wish for at midnight, he whispers it like a secret spell: I want Dad to get a better job so he can come home from work earlier and play with me. His mother smiles, eyes shining, and squeezes his hand tighter.

Near the barricades, twenty-three-year-old Lily stands on tiptoe, phone raised, livestreaming the crowd. This is her first year in the city, her first year alone. She tells her followers she’s wishing for “success,” but when the music starts and confetti cannons loom above, her real wish settles quietly in her chest: To belong. To be seen. To not feel so small in such a big place.

A few blocks away, in a warm bar with fogged-up windows, thirty-eight-year-old Marcus clinks glasses with friends he’s known since college. They joke loudly about resolutions they won’t keep. But when the bartender turns up the volume on the countdown, Marcus thinks of the year behind him—the cancer diagnosis, the fear and a glimpse of hope, the nights alone that felt endless when the body was too weak to move. His wish is simple and brave: Peace. Not happiness. Just peace.

Across town, in her small studio apartment overlooking Riverside Park, sixty-two-year-old Elaine watches the ball drop on an old television set. Her husband’s chair is still by the window, untouched since he passed last spring. She lights a single candle at 11:59 and closes her eyes. Let this year hurt less, she wishes. And let me laugh again without guilt.

Down on the sidewalk below her building, seventeen-year-old Emma and her friends huddle together, shrieking as the countdown begins. They’ve promised each other they’ll stay close after graduation, even though colleges and futures are pulling them in different directions. Emma’s wish slips through her breath like steam: Please don’t let us forget each other.

In Times Square, the numbers flash—ten, nine, eight—and the city counts as one. Strangers link arms. Couples kiss too early. Someone cries. Someone laughs.

Three.

Two.

One.

Midnight explodes.

Confetti rains down like colored snow, and for a moment, the city forgets its sharp edges. Wishes float upward—big and small, hopeful and heavy—threading through skyscrapers and winter air, layering themselves into the night.

Some wishes will come true. Some will change shape. Some will be quietly replaced by disappointment that will teach the person to concentrate on what they truly want in life.

But for this single, shimmering moment, New York City holds them all—every age, every heart, every hope—ringing in a new year together.

 

 

There’s no recipe today, but you get my personal wishes for a fantastic 2026.

Let’s hope they all come true!

 

And some extra New Year wishes from Afina 🐶