Sunday Essay: On New Year’s Day, Hobbes, and the Big White Sheet of Paper

The original date of publication for this essay is Sunday, January 3rd. It is the 25th of what’s intended to be a year’s worth of essays, published on Sundays. That intention, like everything, is subject to change.

Last week’s essay: On Barnaby, Christmas Morning, and the Meaning of Pets

I’ve long loved New Year’s. I can’t pinpoint exactly when it started, but some year in my life, I came to love the day. Not the night. Let me be clear about that. I don’t dislike New Year’s Eve—it’s often a fun time—but it’s just one such night out of many. A lot of times, I wish I could go to bed earlier. Because it’s the next morning that I love. New Year’s Day. Some year in my life, I came to love the idea of a day specifically about changing the things in your life you want to change.

This feeling doesn’t isolate itself to New Year’s, for me. I drop it upon my birthday. I drop it upon Ash Wednesday, and upon Easter six and a half weeks later. I drop it upon the first Sunday of Advent. I used to drop it on the first day of school, and the last day of school, and the first and last day of a new and old job. I’ve tried forcing it upon less naturally noteworthy days, choosing some event as a catalyst for transformation.

Of course, this isn’t the best way to change the things in your life you want to change. Picking a day and trying to change everything at once isn’t all that effective. I know this. But it’s nice, for that day. And sometimes, good changes can come from being prompted to try to change. Not all of them stick, but some do, and in the moment, whether they will or won’t isn’t entirely consequential. What’s more consequential is the possibility that they might.

In elementary school, I came into possession of my brother’s stack of Calvin and Hobbes books. I don’t know exactly how this came to pass, but after a time, all of them were on the bookshelf beside my bed, and for stretches of that season of life, I’d read them every night, using some penlight or bright alarm clock or flashlight (if I was lucky) beneath my covers. The strip ended with 1995, so I was never around to read it daily, and I remember—burning through weeks of strips at a time—how it blew my mind that someone could have ever read Calvin and Hobbes just once a day and not come away starved (especially during the week in which Calvin left Hobbes in the woods after they had a disagreement en route to the Yukon). The worlds Bill Watterson crafted were so immersive, so complete, that to take just a slice of them daily seemed incomprehensible.

But I’m getting away from my point.

The last strip of Calvin and Hobbes is perhaps its best (apologies to Spaceman Spiff). It’s a Sunday comic, meaning it afforded Watterson room for artistry. Calvin and Hobbes are cutting a path through new fallen snow—snow that weighs down an evergreen in the background and forces Hobbes to carry the pair’s trusty toboggan up high on his torso. The friends remark on the freshness of the scene. “A day full of possibilities!” Calvin exclaims. “It’s like having a big white sheet of paper to draw on!” Hobbes celebrates. Before the pair sleds off over the rolling hills of everytown, Calvin turns back to his tiger: “It’s a magical world, Hobbes, ol’ buddy.” And then, snow kicking up behind them as they soar over a mound, “Let’s go exploring!”

It’s a beauty of a comic strip, and I wonder, looking back upon it, how much publicity had awaited it. Did readers know Bill Watterson was about to retire? Did they know, opening the paper that Sunday morning, that this was the last chapter? When looking at the cartoonist’s farewell, a farewell that left his characters not growing up or growing old, but remaining young forever—forever exploring, forever soaring off hills on their trusty toboggan—did their eyes mist up? Did they think of Watterson’s own big white sheet of paper, upon which to draw the rest of his life, having created perhaps the pinnacle of an entire form of art before even turning 40?

I suppose I could find out, but that, again, is getting away from the point. The point of this centers around the fact that Watterson ended the comic on New Year’s Eve of that year. In the strip, in the panel before Hobbes rejoices at the big white sheet of paper before him, Calvin comments: “A new year…a fresh, clean start!”

So I wonder, reading that, if Watterson saw in New Year’s some of the possibility that so forcefully enchants me every year at this time. I wonder if he, too, loved the big white sheet of paper the new year offers.

Because in the end, that’s what is so enchanting about New Year’s Day. It’s the morning. It’s the new fallen snow. It’s the opportunity to make tracks, by foot and toboggan, and to see—before those tracks are laid—how open and possible all things are in the face of a beginning.

So Happy New Year. Happy beginning. And to Hobbes, especially, happy big white sheet of paper.

Next week’s essay: On D.C., Long Distance, and Saying Goodbye

Editor. Occasional blogger. Seen on Twitter, often in bursts: @StuartNMcGrath
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2 thoughts on “Sunday Essay: On New Year’s Day, Hobbes, and the Big White Sheet of Paper

  1. I like New Year’s Day, too! For the same reasons: so clean, so uncluttered, so open, so possible. As for Calvin and Hobbes, as I recall, readers did know it would be the final strip. Readers were sad to think it would end, but what a brilliant ending it was.

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