Countdowns, grapes, contemplation: New Year’s with the Marlow teamJanuary 2, 2025

For the Charles Marlow team, New Year’s is a time to celebrate. It’s also when we look back over the previous year and plan for the future.

As 2024 ended, Charles Marlow looked back on over a decade of constant growth, of mastering the art of real estate. We made space to consider how the company should evolve in the years to come.

Before we paused for the holidays, I asked Maria and Andreas of the team how they’ll be spending New Year’s.

Maria’s New Year: countdowns and lucky grapes

I’ll spend New Year’s with my family and some close friends here in Mallorca. We won’t go out as my daughter’s only 18 months old. But she’ll probably wake up when she hears the fireworks.

In Mallorca, we celebrate in the same way they do on the Spanish mainland. We switch on the TV just before midnight and wait for the clock of the Royal House of the Post Office in Puerta del Sol, Madrid, to strike midnight. We eat 12 grapes for luck, one each time the clock strikes.

I’m not exactly sure where the tradition of eating 12 lucky grapes comes from. I’ve read that it dates back at least to 1895. People in some parts of Spain believed eating the grapes protected you from witches and evil forces.

The custom was popularised in 1909 by some winegrowers from Alicante after a bumper harvest led to grape overproduction. Broadcasting the countdown from Puerta del Sol began in 1962.

Once we’ve eaten the grapes we’ll celebrate with our family and friends.

I’m definitely over resolutions like running every day or trying to lose X number of kilos. I’ve tried and tested all kinds and they’ve never worked out for me. Now, New Year’s is the time to set long-term personal and family goals with my husband. We’ll have had time to disconnect over Christmas and won’t be in that intense work headspace. I’ll also be thinking about my professional goals.

This year has been about managing motherhood and work so I haven’t had much time to reflect. I’m really looking forward to taking time out to plan.

I would actually like to do something like Andreas is doing. I think spending New Year’s alone is just so empowering. It’s a great way to enter into the year to come.

Andreas: tango and Vipassana meditation

New Year’s has traditionally meant good food and good company for me. In Denmark, where I’m from, it’s all about fireworks – much more so than in Spain. The main square in Copenhagen is full of people letting off fireworks. There’s mayhem everywhere. I’ve had my fireworks period. It was short.

This year, I’ll be as far away from fireworks as you can get. I’m doing a 10-day Vipassana silent meditation retreat in Candelada, Avila, Spain from 26 December to 6 January so I won’t even be aware that it’s New Year’s unless I count the days by scratching them into the wall.

Vipassana means to see things as they really are. My day will begin at 4.00 am with a wakeup bell and continue until 9.00 pm. I’ll be meditating five times a day for a total of about ten hours daily.

Places for the retreats at Candelada go really quickly so I was very happy to get one. I’m getting a bit nervous now but I’m looking forward to going.

I’m not going on the retreat to solve the meaning of life. I want to immerse myself in meditation. I’ve wanted to meditate seriously for years but haven’t been able to get the habit going. It’s been a bit too much of a conscious effort. I’m hoping that meditating five times a day will alter my brain chemistry so that when I come out of the retreat I’ll have a habit I can bring into my new life.

Developing a habit is better for me than setting a resolution I’ll struggle to stick to. Although in 2023, I did have a good experience with a resolution for the first time in my life. I decided I needed to dance milonga, the quickest and most challenging tango style, more often.

I resolved to dance at least one tanda of milonga every time I went dancing. A tanda is three dances. I stuck to this for the whole year, forcing myself to go out and dance hundreds of times.

It completely changed my dance, the feeling I have when I dance. I have more joy in dancing. It feels great. I’m hoping that, in a different way, incorporating meditation into my life and connecting to myself and who I want to be will make 2025 a special year.

From Times Square to Sóller: my New Year’s

A typical American New Year’s celebration involves watching the Times Square Ball drop. At 11.59 pm, the ball begins to drop down a flagpole. It finishes dropping at midnight, signalling the start of the New Year. The ball drop ritual began on 31 December 1907 and – apart from 1942 and 1943 when there was a wartime blackout – it’s continued ever since.

The Times Square ball drop is iconic. Although I lived in NYC for ten years, I only saw it for real one time.

Now that I live in Sóller, Times Square has been replaced by the village square. Together with my neighbours, my husband and our daughter, I chase grapes at countdown and then stroll home.

In America, we make New Year’s resolutions but I think they’re quite unhealthy. So often, we commit to something drastic that we can’t continue. We give up and then spend the rest of the year feeling guilty about what we haven’t achieved.

For the past few years, I’ve been more interested in the cycles of nature than in the traditional calendar. I started celebrating the Equinoxes and Solstices. It’s my way of acknowledging and connecting to the impermanence of life and constant change. Rather than resolutions, I make evolutions in small steps every day of the year.

This is how I see Charles Marlow evolving in the year to come. Every day, we’ll take a small step forward. It’s exciting.