One of my many superlative big sisters^[1] has lived in London for almost 20 years. We’ve been close ever since she spent a great deal more time than could have been expected looking after me in my childhood while our mother was occupied at law school and elsewhere. Ours is a history of strong affinity, distinct but complementary worldviews, and deliberate effort to maintain a connection across decades as adults and more than 5,300 miles (or “8,600 kilos” as she might put it).

In high school, I would visit Alicia in the Manhattan apartment she shared with her then-boyfriend, now husband, Michael. Michael and I connected right away over Eddie Murphy movies and Magic: The Gathering games; he remains one of the people dearest to me in the world. After college, I’d work 80-hour weeks before taking the train to their house north of the city in Pleasantville to eat a big meal^[2] and then collapse on the couch to stay up far too late watching TV.^[3]

Their son, Alexander, was born in 2000, when I was 20. His sister, Lily, my goddaughter^[4], followed two years later. Lacking significant personal archetypes, I took my best swing at uncling and godfathering, making it up as I went. By the time Katie and I moved to California in 2005, the kids and I were inseparable on my weekend visits. Leaving the Ferragamos^[5] was one of the hardest parts of leaving the state I’d been born in and lived in my entire life.

With schedules growing tighter and summers jammed with classes and internships, other trips, camps and Scouts outings, Alicia and I looked to the week after Christmas to maintain our streak in 2022. We always stay home through the 25th to be with my mother, who lives in Mill Valley, and Katie’s family, most of whom live nearby. That year, we packed ourselves up before dinner on Christmas Eve, had our usual delirious, joyful, exhausting Christmas day, went to sleep early and boarded a morning flight to Heathrow.

It was a magical week: Alexander and Lily were both home from college and Micheal took a break from his frenetic corporate jet setting. The gang was all there! From the Hyde Park Winter Wonderland carnival to a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory-themed holiday tea to seeing Wicked in the West End to shopping at Selfridges to visiting the Forbidden Planet’s London Megastore (it’s bigger and even more amazing than New York’s!), we Londoned hard.

Despite all of this, we came to realize that the best moments of the trip were spent loafing around my sister’s house, ordering late-night doner on Deliveroo, making inappropriate jokes, and binge watching things like Wednesday and Cunk on Earth together. During a boisterous New Year’s Eve celebration, we unanimously agreed to meet up during the same week the following year, this time in Tiburon.

For 2023-2024 we dispensed with all pretense of doing anything other than hanging around the house overeating and practicing our unique and long-refined brand of relentless insult comedy^[8]. Claire, who had just gotten a deck of charcuterie cards for Christmas, made us some epic boards. Of course, we exercised, went to the San Francisco Botanical Garden and the Japanese Tea Garden and had a few nice meals out, but all of us (save Alexander, who was by then living and working in New York City and couldn’t get away) just leaned into being together with some of our top-centile favorite people.

Somewhere along the way, Katie circulated a meme to our group chat about losing track of time and eating too much cheese during the week after Christmas, and we all started calling our now-committedly annual get-together “Cheese Week.” The capstone was a no-holds-barred talent show on New Year’s Eve, with everything from magic tricks to blindfolded makeup to dramatic readings to AI art generated from our best group texts.

Lily finished college last year and also moved to New York, so of course Alicia and Michael decided to break camp in London and found a new “flat” in Manhattan. They’ve been living between the two cities and will bid farewell to their U.K. home for good in July. This all made 2024-2025’s Cheese Week destination a no-brainer. We spent a very active few days in New York City–sating our Broadway show and Central Park walk and steakhouse and Korean Barbecue and churrascaria pangs–before driving to Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains for a big–you guessed it–charcuterie dinner, another talent show (this one featuring family trivia Family Feud!), a few raucous games of Salad Bowl^[9], a very late-night Dominos order and–as is customary and required–probably 12 movies of variable provenance.

 We kept the kids on California time to match the Ferragamos’ nocturnal schedule, temporarily decriminalized invective language (maybe not the best idea) and hosted a party for 16 when my step-father and step-sister came to visit with her husband and kids. We spent a day at a 250,000 square foot indoor waterpark. Glorious!

This year, for the first time, Alex and Lily brought significant others with them. Lily’s boyfriend had been around for a while and built up some resistance to the relentless, Archer-like banter Michael, Alexander and I volley around, but I felt for Alex’s girlfriend of a scant two months being thrown into the crucible.^[10] Cheese Week is a sacred time to recharge with some of the people we love most–to be included is to be welcomed into the innermost of circles. I was glad to see our circle expanding–a bit.