Apres Holiday

Most everyone I know is glad the holidays are over. I, on the other hand, suffer a mild to moderate depression once all the festivities have finally come to an end.

I admit it. I am one of those "Christmas people." I love decorating the tree. Sitting by the fire listening to Christmas music. Watching Christmas Vacation over and over until the lines between my holidays and the Griswold's are blurred beyond recognition.

Over the last couple of days, I have been periodically (and sadly) removing Christmas decorations from the rooms in my home. On New Year's night, still nursing a bit of a hangover, I took all the ornaments off the tree, leaving it naked with nothing but it's twinkling white lights to cover its fading needles. The next morning, my son got up from bed, went into the living room, and came running back as if someone had just taken off with his shiny new squad of Pixar Cars. "Where are all the
ornaments?" he asked. "It's time for us to put the tree outside," I told him. "But why?" he pleaded. "Christmas is over," I said bitterly.

But for four days the tree stood there in our living room, naked and twinkling, hanging on. It's star shining like a beacon of hope. On day three, I noticed one lone ornament hanging from a low branch - a sign of solidarity, no doubt, put up by my son.

Tonight marked the complete removal of our beloved Tannenbaum. The removal on this particular day has nothing to do with the Epiphany but rather the fact that our tree stopped drinking water well before Christmas and there was a rather well-defined circle of pine needles circumventing our tree skirt.

Our son, eager to help with this obviously ceremonious task, told us in no uncertain terms that we would be getting a new tree to replace this "old" one. I didn't have the heart to tell him that a new tree would not arrive for another 335 days. Our collective disappointment would have been too much to bear.

The silver lining to all this Christmas tree removal business though is that our small living room feels unusually large without that all important symbol of the holiday season taking up half our space. A couple of minutes after the tree was tossed out into the icy snow, I was already talking up a few new pieces of furniture and conjuring mental blueprints for our "new" room. I'm feeling better already. And after all, Christmas is only a mere 354 days away now.

Damn. But it's a leap year, isn't it?