The Seduction of a Boxing Day Personal Rebrand

The day after Christmas marks the first day of an addictive annual ritual

When I was little, Christmas was my favorite holiday. On the day after Christmas, I’d often act a little…well, a little hung over. And this was after acting drunk all throughout Christmas, twirling deliriously as I emptied my stocking of Santa-shaped chocolate marshmallows and ripped the metallic wrapping paper off of a box that contained Felicity the American Girl Doll’s horse.

Every little girl’s dream

But after all the presents were opened and my cousins had left our house, I just felt…blah. I felt, well, hung over. I was stuffed with sugar, I didn’t even really want to eat sweets anymore, and while I was usually very happy with my toys and didn’t necessarily want any new toys, I wanted to go back in time to the moment when I first discovered my Christmas presents. It felt weird to have an absolutely amazing day, and then feel straight-up terrible afterward. I also felt a little guilty. This feeling of letdown could be confused with a lack of gratitude, but I was very grateful! I just hated that all the excitement was over.

As I got to be a pre-teen, and Felicity’s horse was replaced by things like glittery lip gloss, the Body Shop tea tree oil nose pore strips, and Limited Too T-shirts with groovy panda bears on them, the unnerving energy of the Christmas hangover found a refreshing outlet: the personal rebrand. My Christmas gifts, and my reflections of the year, would help me to transform into a New Me. And not just the basic things like eating better, working out more, or being more confident. The New Me, devised around Boxing Day, would almost always revolve around lengthy rituals of primping, relaxing, meditating, or planning—keeping a diary with details of my outfits and what I wore, concocting a skincare and haircare schedule from which I would never deviate, and one year, making a ridiculous pact with myself that I would wear French braided pigtails every day for the rest of my life.

While this was a regular thing for me (and to some extent still is) I’m convinced I’m not the only one. I have a feeling that many people today—especially women—are working on their own personal rebrands for 2025. And I will argue that these rebrands, even if they seem pointless and even if you know they won’t result in anything, are worth doing.