“Doing Christmas” is like having a baby.
When you’re in the midst of doing it, it’s difficult and overwhelming, and sometimes you think you just can’t take it anymore, but you keep on pushing through.
When it’s all over, though, you forget how difficult it was, and you’re filled with desire for another.
So, it is in the days after Christmas. In that eerie week between Christmas and New Year, you wander about in a sort of shock. Life’s not back to normal in many ways; we’re still suspended in that slower pace of the holiday season. Yet Christmas is over.
How are we all of a sudden on the other side of yet another Christmas? How did it end so quickly? How is it already over?
And now that January has started for real, and the holidays are truly over, it’s packing-up time. We’re taking ornaments off trees, untangling and rolling up lengths of lights, gathering up the garland. Green and red knick-knacks come off the tabletop, mantles and shelves, and perhaps some special holiday art comes off the walls.
Yet as you get out the boxes to put it all away, there may be some neglected decorations at the bottom. In the far reaches of the outbuilding or attic there may be some boxes of goodies that never even made it out this season.
As we put things away, we are haunted by ways we could have, should have, done it better. More garland should have been hung. The outdoor lights should have extended even further out in the yard. The ornaments that a couple of months ago didn’t seem shiny or pretty enough this year to take out of the box suddenly beckon, again worthy of display.
If only.
The regret tortures: We should have done Christmas better.
The next 11 months stretch ahead, seemingly interminably, before we can redeem ourselves by decorating as we really should have.
Or baked more Christmas treats, decorated more cookies, made the wreaths ourselves, sent out more Christmas cards.
Somehow, the constant unbearable hassle of the past several weeks fades from the mind. For a month, or perhaps even longer, it was a constant struggle to get boxes out and put boxes away, to decorate, to attend parties, perhaps to give a party, to cook, to drive kids places, to go to holiday programs, to buy, to wrap, to send cards.
In the days after Christmas, we forget how hard it is to make the holiday magic happen, and just want to make it again.
But here we are in January, perhaps the slowest month of the year.
Let’s just take a deep breath, and relax.
Though it’s certainly OK if you spend some of this time shopping the 75% off Christmas sales to add to what you do next year!
