With the Christmas cookies about to be officially put away for another year, people can get busy on a batch of everyone's favorite holiday treat — New Year's fudge.

Most will serve it up just after midnight tonight, heavy as a mud bundt cake, sweetened with promises to be better next year and an irresistible nougat center of excuses for why we won't be.

Fudging our way out of a new and improved self are as common as making New Year's resolutions, says psychotherapist, spiritual guidance-giver and popular cultural analyst Will Miller. It's like keeping our fingers crossed when we commit to recommit, the most basic form of kidding ourselves or our most intimate white lie.

Miller, whose latest book on American relationships is "Refrigerator Rights," says some of us dip a finger into the creamy excuses right away, "tailoring semantics and definitions and specifics, which of course just whittles away our resolve."

We'll pose questions, usually to ourselves, such as when exactly does a New Year's resolution begin — at midnight or on Jan. 2 or the first day back at work in the new year or the first day of February because January is kind of the recovery month needed to fully cleanse the residue of the bad habits of last year so as not to contaminate the improvements in the new, better year.

Miller and other observers of the human condition say while people shouldn't be too quick to let themselves off the hook, they agree white lies to ourselves or to others can be good personal politics — a kind of WD-40 in a sticky situation, as long as it is used sparingly, isn't harmful to others and doesn't turn you slippery.

They make for a smoother operating workplace and possibly better health. "Therapeutic fibs" for our own good are a common practice in medicine.

Is there anyone who really thinks they could withstand the friction of promising to go a year — or even a day — without a white lie? Is just being more cautious about telling white lies a worthy or even possible New Year's resolution for 2006?

Some church leaders say no and that it's actually ethical to tell white lies. Others say being totally truthful, especially with yourself, is the only acceptable rule and that people who believe white lies are OK in any circumstance believe that the 9th Commandment comes with a fine print loophole.