“So, like always, we’re hosting at our place. It’s tradition by now.”
Diana froze, staring at her phone. The family group chat was exploding—confetti emojis, looping champagne GIFs. Her mother-in-law was already describing in detail which “herring under a fur coat” salad she’d make—bringing only that, naturally. Lyudmila Sergeyevna was asking what vegetarian options there would be for her daughter.
Diana put the phone on the table. Outside, snow drifted down slowly, turning into heavy wet clumps on the windowsill. From the living room came the sound of the TV—Igor was watching hockey. Maksim was already asleep.
She scrolled up. Twenty-seven messages in the last hour.
A new message from Igor popped up: “I’ll order meat from that butcher shop we used in the summer. Three kilos enough?”
No one had asked her opinion. Seventh year running.
Diana Sokolova worked as a manager at a logistics company. Every day she mapped routes, optimized shipments, solved late-delivery disasters. At work, she was valued for anticipating problems and finding a way out of dead ends. At home, for some reason, those skills never seemed to apply.
Igor ran sales at an IT company. Charismatic and loud, he naturally became the center of any crowd. At corporate events, people flocked to him like iron filings to a magnet. At home he was the same—warm, generous, forever promising everyone a get-together at their place.
Their first New Year’s in their own apartment was supposed to be special. Maksim was barely six months old; he only fell asleep in someone’s arms and woke at the slightest rustle. Celebrating at relatives’ homes meant a sleepless night in a strange place.
“Let’s invite the guys,” Igor had suggested back then, hanging string lights above the window. “It’ll be depressing, just the two of us with a baby. That’s no way to live.”
Diana agreed. She pictured a quiet evening—two friends, a glass of champagne, mandarins on the table. Igor invited eight people.
What happened was nothing like her imagination. She remembered every detail. On December 30 she raced through stores with a stroller, the exhausted baby whining inside. She lugged four bags of groceries home, stopping every ten meters to shift them in her hands. In the elevator, a bag split open and potatoes scattered across the grimy floor.
Igor came home late—his office party ran long.
“I’ll just lie down for a minute,” he mumbled, collapsing onto the couch. “You start without me, I’ll join in later.”
Diana chopped Olivier salad until three in the morning—tiny cubes of carrots, potatoes, eggs. The herring salad required another round of beet madness; she scrubbed her hands for half an hour afterward. The hot dish was in the oven, salads packed into the fridge, cold cuts laid out.
The guests brought cognac, whiskey, and a “Prague” cake from the nearest supermarket. Andrey and Marina brought a bottle of prosecco. Everyone else brought nothing but their appetite.
Igor woke up a couple hours before they arrived, showered, changed, and greeted everyone with open arms.
“Diana, you’re a wizard!” Marina squealed, spooning herself a third helping of Olivier. “How do you manage all this with a baby?”
Diana smiled, carried out more plates, topped up glasses. By midnight she could barely stand, but she kept smiling. It was a holiday—her first holiday as a family.
At three a.m., when the last tf guests finally left, she collapsed on the couch still in her dress. Igor was snoring in the bedroom. The kitchen looked like a battlefield.
“Fantastic night,” he said in the morning, stretching. “We should do this more often.”
The second New Year was supposed to be easier. Diana prepared her shopping list early, planned the cooking schedule. But two days before the holiday, Igor announced with bright enthusiasm:
“Mom’s coming with Uncle Kolya and Aunt Lyuda! I told you.”
He hadn’t. Diana was sure of it.
Her mother-in-law, Tamara Petrovna, arrived on the thirty-first at ten in the morning with three heavy bags.
“I brought my herring,” she declared from the doorway. “And pickled mushrooms. Where do you have space in the fridge?”
There was no space. The refrigerator was stuffed. Diana had to reshuffle everything, cram it tighter, move some food out onto the balcony.
“Dianochka, this mayonnaise of yours is… not right,” Tamara Petrovna said, rummaging. “I always buy Provansal. It’s better.”
“This one is fine too, Mom,” Diana tried, slicing carrots for vinaigrette.
“Oh, please,” her mother-in-law waved her off. “Nikolai, go buy a proper one.”
Lyudmila Sergeyevna decided to “help” with the herring, cleaning it right on the dining table over a newspaper. Scales flew everywhere. Nikolai Petrovich smoked on the balcony every half hour, leaving the door open. Cold air and tobacco seeped through the apartment.
“Why aren’t you making cutlets?” Tamara Petrovna asked, peering into the oven. “There must be cutlets on New Year’s.”
“We’re doing meat French-style.”
“That’s not the same. Igoryok likes cutlets.”
By evening the kitchen was pure chaos. Dirty dishes piled in the sink and on the counters. Three pots boiled at once, and Diana couldn’t even remember what was in which. She ricocheted between the stove and the guests, cooking, serving, cleaning—simultaneously.
Igor wandered into the kitchen around ten.
“How’s it going? Need help?”
“Everything’s ready,” Tamara Petrovna smiled broadly. “We handled it. Right, Dianochka?”
At the table Igor poured champagne, told jokes, soaked up compliments for being such a hospitable host. He raised his glass:
“To our big happy family! To traditions!”
Everyone clinked and laughed and wished each other joy. Diana sat on the edge of her chair, ready to leap up the moment she was needed. Maksim was whining—too many people, too much noise, too much commotion.
“Go put him to bed,” Igor gestured. “We’ll be fine without you.”
She rocked her son in the bedroom, listening to bursts of laughter through the closed door. It was 11:30. She greeted the New Year alone, holding her child, watching distant fireworks flare outside the window.
In the third year, Diana tried to change things. A month before the holiday, she suggested in the chat that everyone bring one dish.
“Let’s have each person make a dish. It’s fairer and easier for everyone.”
“Why complicate it?” Igor replied. “We’ve got it down.”
“It’s hard for me to cook for fifteen people alone.”
“Mom will help. Right, Mom?”
“Of course! I’ll come early.”
Tamara Petrovna arrived on the morning of the thirtieth with Igor’s uncle and his wife. After that, friends showed up—supposedly “to help cook.”
The small kitchen couldn’t fit that many “helpers.” Someone decided to fry fish. The ventilation couldn’t keep up; the smell soaked into curtains, clothes, hair. Igor’s sister chopped vegetables for salad on the coffee table in the living room because the cutting board was taken.
“Where’s your colander? Do you have a whisk? What about a baking dish?”
Tamara Petrovna directed the whole parade, shifting finished plates around.
“That goes at the far end of the table. No, better in the center. Actually—no, far end again.”
Nikolai Petrovich opened cognac “to warm up” at four in the afternoon. By eight he could barely stand, yet he kept offering advice.
“Cut the pickles smaller. And more dill. Dill is important.”
Diana ran back and forth between the kitchen and the living room. At one point she found Maksim under the table—hiding from the noise with his hands clamped over his ears.
The apartment was in shambles. Onion peels littered the floor. The sink was jammed with dirty dishes—no one washed anything after themselves. Someone spilled red wine on the pale carpet in the living room.
“Don’t worry,” Igor brushed it off. “We’ll clean it later.”
An hour before midnight, Diana stood in the wreck of the kitchen and stared at the holiday table. Beautiful, abundant, impressive. Guests were gathering, clinking glasses, laughing. And she felt nothing. Absolutely nothing about what year would begin in an hour—she just wanted it to end.
She caught herself thinking: if nothing changes, this is forever. Every year. Again and again.
Now, a week before New Year’s, Diana sat at the kitchen table with her phone in her hand. The chat was bubbling with plans. Igor was already assigning who would handle what—meaning, he was dividing alcohol duties among the men. Cooking, as always, wasn’t even up for discussion.
She got up and walked into the living room. Igor was sprawled on the couch, scrolling social media.
“Igor, we need to talk.”
“Hm?” He didn’t look up.
“I’m not hosting New Year’s anymore.”
Now he looked at her.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean exactly that. For seven years I’ve cooked alone for a whole crowd. Then I spend a week scrubbing the apartment. I’m done.”
“You’re exaggerating. Mom helps. Friends help too.”
“Your mom comes and creates extra chaos. Friends bring alcohol and think that’s their contribution.”
Igor was silent, processing. Then he shrugged.
“So what do you want me to do—kick everyone out?”
“I want a choice. Either you celebrate without me, or you move it somewhere else.”
“You’re serious?”
“Completely. Maksim and I will go to my parents’. Mom already invited us.”
Igor stood up and paced.
“And what am I supposed to tell people? That my wife ran off on New Year’s?”
“Tell the truth. For seven years they came to your party, and I served them. I don’t want to do it anymore.”
“They’ll be offended.”
“Offended by what—that they’ll have to take care of themselves for once?”
A new message from Tamara Petrovna appeared: “Igoryok, should I buy a duck? Or is turkey better?”
Diana stood.
“Decide. You’ve got a week.”
The next few days passed in tense silence. Igor refused to speak to her on principle. Maksim picked up on the mood and fussed more than usual.
On the third day, Igor finally cracked.
“Fine. What exactly are you proposing?”
“Option one: you all go to a restaurant. Option two: you meet at someone else’s place. Option three: you cook and clean yourself.”
“Me? I don’t know how to cook for that many people!”
“Exactly. And you think I was born knowing how?”
Igor paused. For the first time in seven years, he tried to picture her reality: shopping lists, queues, hours at the stove, mountains of dishes.
“What if… what if we order catering? They bring everything ready-made and clean up afterward.”
“That costs money.”
“Well… it’s once a year.”
Diana watched him slowly grasp the scale of what she’d been doing for free all those years.
In the chat Igor wrote: “Everyone, this year I suggest we meet at a restaurant. I’m booking a table.”
Complaints poured in:
“At home it’s cozier,” Tamara Petrovna wrote.
“At least we can bring our own alcohol, right?” Lyudmila Sergeyevna asked.
“That’s expensive!” Nikolai Petrovich protested.
“It’s decided,” Igor replied curtly.
Diana read the messages. For the first time in seven years, Igor had taken her side.
Igor managed to find only a small family café on the outskirts—everything else had been booked a month earlier. “The Old Mill” turned out to be a warm place with wooden beams and a fireplace.
Nikolai Petrovich and his wife stayed home—“for that kind of money we could eat for a week.” Only the closest relatives came. Tamara Petrovna spent the evening calculating prices and sighing.
“At home it would’ve been three times cheaper.”
“And nobody cooked,” Igor shot back, glancing at his wife.
Diana calmly ate her mushroom pastry without jumping up every five minutes. Maksim sat beside her instead of hiding under the table. At eleven they excused themselves and drove to Diana’s parents.
Valentina Andreyevna greeted them with a smile.
“Perfect timing—tea’s ready. Dad lit the fireplace.”
They met midnight by the tree, quietly clinking glasses. Maksim fell asleep on the couch under a blanket. For the first time in seven years, Diana smiled on New Year’s Eve for real.
Morning of January 1. Diana woke in her childhood room to the smell of pancakes. Outside, fat snowflakes were falling, settling on the branches of the old apple tree.
In the living room, Igor was helping Sergey Pavlovich set up a toy train track for Maksim—the grandfather’s gift. The two men were absorbed in planning the best way to loop the rails around the Christmas tree.
“Dad, look—the engine’s moving!” Maksim bounced with delight.
Diana walked into the kitchen. Valentina Andreyevna flipped a pancake in the pan.
“Sleep well?”
“Like I was a kid again. Even my dreams were calm.”
Her mother smiled, pouring her tea.
“Igor told me about the restaurant this morning. Says your mother-in-law spent the whole evening adding up what every dish cost.”
“At least I got to eat peacefully on New Year’s for the first time in seven years.”
Igor leaned into the kitchen doorway.
“Dianochka, I’m sorry. I truly didn’t understand what it was like for you all those years.”
“Do you understand now?”
“When Mom started complaining about the prices and Uncle Kolya didn’t even come because of money… I suddenly saw it. They weren’t coming to me. They were coming for ready-made food. And you were the one making it.”
From the living room came Maksim’s laughter—the train had derailed, and Grandpa was acting out a dramatic crash.
“Next year, let’s celebrate here,” Igor suggested. “Just the four of us. Family-style.”
Diana looked out the window. Bright bullfinches perched on the apple tree branch.
“We’ll see,” she said. “We’ve got a whole year ahead of us.”
And she smiled—truly smiled.