There are rules around present-opening, and that’s only right. No one likes the spoil-sport who tip-toes down the day before a major celebration to ravenously rent open their gifts with gluttony and glee. Mostly on Art 2010, I’ve exercised a great deal of restraint in waiting patiently until the decreed and agreed day when I could unveil a painted or sculpted thing to you: saints stuck fast to their official feasts days, festivals were fused to the correct calendar mark. It wasn’t always easy, I’ll grant you that (patience is not one of my most easy virtues), but there’s no point pinpointing a year with higgledy-piggledy highlights.

For all the hijinks and jolliness of this time of year, late December can be tension territory. Fun friends or family get-togethers can get altogether less fun when your cousin comments on something she shouldn’t, or brother and sister start bickering about a thing over the brandy butter and mince pies. Putting lots of people into a space and filling them up on food and booze can sometimes add fuel to the fire of seasonal stress, and tips for taking the testiness down a notch are appearing everywhere right about now. The salient point to stick to, I suppose, is that a picture-perfect holiday gathering is a cheesy movie myth, and nothing more. And anyway, it seems that sometimes a little knife-edge tension can actually come out looking rather lovely: Knife Edge Mirror Two Piece (1976-1978) by Sir Henry Moore stands serene and shimming at the National Gallery of Art East entrance, and what an enveloping and evolving work it is.

It’s that time of year, when sniffles and sneezes and snorts and wheezes are all around as people succumb to seasonal coughs and colds. If the passenger on the bus beside you isn’t honking into a hankie, then your colleagues at work will be chugging hot tea with honey for their throats. It’s a big job, battling to keep at bay all those bugs and bacteria being airborne as everyone is eventually felled by a fat bout of flu. Well, worry not, because to boost your immune systems today I’ve a peachy picture to make you feel all better.

Extensive travel is just one of the perks of art. During the course of this year, I’ve been to places I’m not sure I’ll see again before I expire. Painted pictures at the National Gallery of Art have broadened my horizons, and I still have a few more pit-stops on the traveling train before my year profiling 365 works of art screeches to a halt on December 31. Today, we travel into the heart of America, with two artists who capture the charm of this country with disarming visions. Both Grant Wood (1891 – 1942) and Thomas Hart Benton (1889 – 1975) resisted the trend towards abstraction that dominated American art in the 1920s and 30s; instead, they stuck to the figurative convention, reflecting life in more realistic terms.

I’m attached to the saint we’re talking about today: St. Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland and gave his name to that fantastic place in Fife (legend says that relics were conveyed there from Constantinople in the 10th century). Andrew was a brother of Saint Peter and, like him, a disciple of Christ. Andrew’s attribute is an X-shaped cross, following the method of his martyrdom: he requested not to die on a Latin cross, deeming himself unworthy to be crucified in the same way as Jesus. St Andrew’s Cross is still on the national flag of Scotland.

I once read that the key to the power of people-persuasion is the curveball. As in, when faced with a person who isn’t receptive to what you’re saying, going on a tangent or offering some unique unexpected angle on a situation can be the way through a communication impasse. I adore art that persuades with a visual curveball, jolting us upright and making us take proper sustained notice in the process. In the case of Daybreak – A Time to Rest (1967), it’s an enormous pair of hugely disproportioned feet, sitting padded and fat, flush with the picture plane.

It’s time to bust out the bunting, Britain: William has popped that all important question! In fact, he and Kate got engaged in Kenya last month in a move that ended a marathon eight-year courtship. Prime Minister David Cameron was among the first to congratulate them, stepping outside No. 10 to state that William is “extremely excited” and “thrilled.”

During the year I lived in Milan, I learned a few things about Mediterranean mealtimes. Breakfast is bolted on the hop, but lunches are long and dinners drawn-out. Even in the middle of an overbooked day at the office, colleagues would collect up bags and blackberries at midday and march out for a repast done right. And right means your primo pasto, secondo and perhaps a light little something for dessert (some scoops of tiramisu or a creme caramel). The point is there’s ritual, and a regular order to things in Italian eating — and what I was most struck by when I first got there was seeing the cigarette slot into the sequence right after the sweet, with the short sharp shot of espresso ingested to expedite the afternoon’s work.

If you thought you were safe from harassment by ghouls, gremlins and hobgoblins after Halloween, think again. November 2 is, by tradition, the Day of All Souls — on which (it has been believed) the unhappy souls of the dead return to their former homes. In the past, people were so superstitious about unsolicited and unsavory visits to their homes on All Souls, that they’d keep the kitchen warm and leave food on the table overnight to appease passing spirits and specters.

Death and the Miser is by Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450 – 1516) a Netherlandish painter whose work was popular and influential during the 16th century but then long forgotten. But since his rediscovery at the start of the 20th century, Bosch’s art has both engrossed and grossed-out viewers with its compellingly strange character.