The Shortest Night, The Longest Table
- Rich Washburn
- Dec 26, 2025
- 2 min read
There’s a strange peace that settles in on Christmas night. The noise stops. The lists stop. The chase pauses.For one night—one dark, midwinter night—everyone, everywhere, seems to remember how to be human.
We spend the whole year competing.Once upon a time, that meant hunting the pig. Now it means fighting for paychecks, clients, clicks, and whatever else keeps the lights on. The arena changed, but the instinct didn’t. Survival still hums underneath everything we do.
And then comes this night—the shortest day, the longest dark—and somehow, as if written into our DNA, we do the exact opposite of what evolution taught us. We stop hoarding. We share. We slow down. We cook slowly. We gather the tribe, light the fire, and lay out an unreasonable amount of food on an unreasonable number of plates.
It’s wildly inefficient. It’s profoundly unprofitable.And it’s perfect.
Nobody complains about Christmas food. Nobody phones it in. Even the cynics—hell, even the Karens—fall silent in front of a ham glazed to perfection or a pie still warm from the oven.Because Christmas food isn’t about convenience; it’s about craft. It’s intentional. Deliberate. Time-intensive.
It’s the one day a year where we trade optimization for devotion.
You can call it Christmas, Yule, Saturnalia, Solstice—doesn’t matter.The name changes, but the instinct doesn’t. For thousands of winters, humans have done this exact thing: work like hell through the lean months, stockpile, and then, at the turning point of the year, open the doors, pour the drinks, and feed everyone. It’s our collective exhale. Our evolutionary sigh of relief. We made it.
That’s why the table feels sacred. There’s wisdom in it—the kind that doesn’t need to be spoken.A shared understanding that for one night, we’ll trade efficiency for connection. We’ll remember that abundance means nothing if it’s not shared.
And maybe that’s what we’ve forgotten the rest of the year.Maybe the “Christmas mindset” isn’t about religion or ritual at all—it’s about remembering that we’re built for this.For the smell of spice and roasted fat. For laughter that echoes off the walls.
For the slow, deliberate act of crafting something beautiful and handing it to someone else. It feels good because it’s ancient. It feels right because it’s human. And maybe—just maybe—we should stop saving that feeling for December.
Because in the end, the shortest night reminds us of the longest truth: we survive better when we share the fire.
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