Every January we get a specific type of call. A patient who meant to come in before Thanksgiving, then before Christmas, then before New Year’s — and now it’s the second week of January and they haven’t been seen in over a year. Some of them have something specific prompting the call: a sensitivity that showed up at a holiday meal and never fully went away, a tooth that ached after something hard, a crown that started feeling different in December. A few had something obvious happen — a chip from hard candy, a filling that came loose.
Those patients come in first. But even patients whose mouths felt fine through the whole season have good reasons to schedule early in the year. What the holidays do to teeth often doesn’t show until a professional looks.
What December Does to a Mouth
After the holidays, we start with the molars. The chewing surfaces flatten out with stress grinding. The cusp tips chip. A lot of patients have no idea they grind until we show them a photo of what their molars looked like at the last cleaning versus what they look like now. A stressful December accelerates it.
The other thing we check is early decay from the sugar exposure that runs from Halloween through New Year’s. November through January, patients are eating and drinking things they don’t touch the rest of the year — hard candies, colas, holiday baked goods, more wine and cocktails. X-rays show the early softening before we can see it in the mouth. Caught at this stage, it’s a small filling. Left until summer, it’s something bigger.
Holiday travel does this every year: patients who normally brush twice a day get inconsistent. Flossing disappears for two weeks. The tartar buildup by January reflects it. A cleaning in January stops it at four months of accumulation. Waiting until June turns that into eight or nine.
What a Post-Holiday Checkup Covers
A post-holiday dental exam runs the same course as any general dentistry visit, but we’re looking specifically at what the season tends to aggravate. We check the molars for flat spots and the front teeth for chipping along the edges. We look at the gum tissue for inflammation that built up after the October cleaning and didn’t resolve on its own. We look at X-rays for early softening.
When we find a crack, we address it before it splits. A crack that gets a crown now is a much simpler case than one that reaches the nerve by spring.
Professional Cleaning After the Holidays
The tartar that built up over the fall needs to come off. Home brushing keeps up with fresh plaque but doesn’t touch calcified deposits — that requires the instruments we use during a professional cleaning. Less accumulated means less work to remove and a cleaner baseline for the rest of the year.
We apply fluoride treatments for patients coming in after a season of above-normal acid exposure. Cold sensitivity or visible erosion at the gumline — those patients get fluoride every visit.
Planning What Comes Next
The January visit is a practical time to plan the rest of the year. If a patient’s been thinking about a crown, a veneer, or whitening, we can walk through the timeline and schedule around what works. Some patients have dental benefits that reset in January — the ones who plan at the January visit tend to actually use them before December comes around again.
If you’ve been thinking about cosmetic dentistry, the start of the year is a natural time to start that conversation. We can look at the current state of your teeth and work out a realistic timeline.
Schedule at Ocean Breeze
Dr. Nicholas Goetz is a fellowship-trained maxillofacial prosthodontist with training from UCLA. Dr. Katie Gavalas sees patients alongside Dr. Goetz — one appointment running at a time. If you’re overdue for a checkup or noticed something during the holidays that hasn’t resolved, contact us to schedule at our Delray Beach office.
