Quote of the Day (Megan Nolan, on Going Home to Ireland for the Holidays)

“I go home for the holidays in Ireland, and whether you like it or not, going back to the place you were raised and known best in the world only once a year tends to invite focused reflection on what is actually taking place in your life. People keep asking you about it, for one thing: what you’re up to, how the boyfriend is, what you’ve got planned for next year. There were only so many times I could respond to those questions by saying I was fairly desperate to move to New York, actually, and the boyfriend is fine but we hadn’t discussed the prospect of me moving, funnily enough, but no doubt things would resolve in some way without me having to take any action. The encroaching reality of another year was too much to ignore. The general melancholy I always feel around Christmas—a time that compels me helplessly to contemplate how many more I will get to share with my family—was joined by another, more specific, sadness: the relationship I was in had come to an end.”— Irish novelist and essayist Megan Nolan, “Merry Ex-Mas,” The Financial Times (“How To Spend It” supplement), November 2025 

The image accompanying this post, showing mid-morning crowds on Grafton Street in Dublin, Ireland, was taken Dec. 19, 2005, by Irish typepad.