A brave new year to… Keep it sweet and simple

By Tamara Davidson

I am a chronic over-caterer. And have never encountered an event that didn’t warrant a table festooned for a festivity.

If I’m truly honest, adapting to roll out smaller scale celebrations for my immediate family alone, has been as much of a relief as it has been a valuable learning on how to embrace moderation.

A life-long fan of the adage ‘more is more’, it’s been surprisingly liberating to raid the plastic storage tubs in the garage and use whatever there is at home or growing in the garden to make a family member or neighbour feel special on a birthday or holiday. My children and I took the same approach to decorating the Pesach Seder table this year: homemade, reworked and recycled. I’m sure that Rosh Hashanah will be done in a similar style: small, intimate and easy.

Table settings and catering menus aside, I aim to emulate this simplified approach in the rest of my life. By sheer force of Covid chaos, our lives have already been pruned to the stems and the notion of a ‘full life’ has been completely redefined.

It’s been wonderful and inspiring to see communities rally together during this time in support of each other with little more than the natural talents that they possess – one of the upsides to people having had the time to explore long-forgotten aptitudes! I hope that this spirit of creativity and collaboration continues and that the ability to trim things down to the basics while reinventing and repurposing existing goods becomes a permanent fixture post-pandemic.

Quality over quantity will be a strong takeaway from the past few months of lockdown living for my family… and I’m quite enjoying a more sedate pace of life!

Tamara owns a small creative consultancy, Schmooze Design, and is currently completing her second children’s book.

Click here to read the other Brave new year to… opinion pieces in this year’s Rosh Hashana theme.

Click here to Download the September issue PDF.

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