BY JULIE SEYLER

Yesterday was Christmas. New Year’s Eve is next Monday. So today, December 26, is traditionally all about hanging around or hitting sales – depending on your preference.  In terms of the general zeitgeist, hanging around seems the rarer option, and grabbing a better bargain at the end-of-the-year sale a constant winner. But I don’t understand why anyone rushes out for a sale anymore. I assume everyone gets the same barrage of e-mail alerts every day announcing the “Last-minute-best-deal ever!” (The identical e-mail offer often comes the next day. And the next.)  We live in a world of permanent sales and deals.

In any case, I won’t be shopping because I have to work. But even if I didn’t, I would not be in a store. These days I do anything to avoid a shopping experience. I wonder if that’s an age-related thing.  When I was under 50, it used to be the exact opposite.

I love post-holiday days at work. Businesses are closed, and people are on vacation. It is an absolute pleasure to sit in my office and get lots of things done. Everyone is relaxed. Frenzy is on hold until 2013, when everybody sheepishly slinks back in.

And for me, today is the day before my boyfriend Steve’s birthday. He gave himself a well-deserved early birthday present: a two-day trip to Florida to play golf. And provided the predicted weekend storm fizzles and misses the East Coast, he’ll be home in time for the birthday dinner I’ve planned. New York City restaurants with Eater buzz are booked solid for forever it seems. So we chose The Post House, where neither of us has been. I especially love his birthday because he is younger than me, so when we celebrate, I celebrate that he keeps inching closer to the left side of 60, where I consider myself to be these days.