on new year's day, before any other letter is written or any other word said, the first letter of the year is composed by each household. it is short. it is addressed to no one in particular, sealed, dated, and placed in a tin on the mantel. it stays there, unopened, for one year. the practice began, according to the postmaster's notebook of 1834, "to give the year a hand to hold."
last year's letter is taken down on the same morning and read once, aloud, by whoever wrote it. then it is burned in the grate. the rule, which is unwritten but firm, is that no letter is shown to another person, no letter is kept beyond its year, and no letter is allowed to say what is true at the moment of writing — only what the writer hopes will be true at the moment of reading.
most households still keep the tin. younger people write theirs on the back of envelopes, on torn pages. older people use ink. the burning takes only a minute. the room smells of paper and wax until the afternoon, when somebody opens a window and the new year begins to be ordinary.
— field note: this year's letter, sealed at eleven minutes past midnight, weighed less in the hand than i remember last year's weighing.