Last year, I finally finished putting Christmas away on January 16. Twenty-two days
after ripped wrapping paper and boxes and tissue paper melded together to form a giant
human-eating blob in the living room. Ten days after the Wise Men came to church disguised
as eight-year-olds. Five days after I stuffed our plastic Christmas tree back into the
attic, accidently forgetting to notice that my husband's gift to me of red and green
striped socks had fallen into the tree box, if you know what I mean.
I finally got out the ladder and then got sap on my fingers as I untangled the lights
from the evergreen tree. I also pulled the string of lights off the side of the house that
I had -- just a few weeks before -- shaped into a giant star. The giant star remained,
however, as a blotch on my decorating career because the tape which I had used to keep the
lights clinging to the red aluminum siding now left ugly white marks.
I stepped back a distance (after first getting down from the ladder) to see if the tape
marks were visible from another viewpoint. They were. I knew then that every person who
drove down the street or stopped by for a visit would surely "tch, tch, tch" me
because I had used tape on aluminum siding.
But no one noticed. No one even noticed I had worked hard to take down the decorations.
The Christmas season always arrives with much excitement. Suddenly it's lights and
garland, plastic "wooden" soldiers, giant Nativity sets and ornament-laden
trees. Houses get lit up like Disney World and executives at the electric company get lit
up by the prospect of sending out humongous electric bills.
Then it's over. Quietly, the decorations come down. Christmas disappears.
One month earlier, the kids had helped Mom prepare for Christmas by removing ornaments
from the tree because they make great accessories to toy cities. Now the children eagerly
plunge into homework as Mom tries to squeeze all 1,427 ornaments into two shoeboxes.
These are the same kids whose eyes glowed with glee when they came home from school to
find a star of lights on the side of the house. Now they fail to notice that Mom has spent
all afternoon taking down the star.
Maybe this is because, for them, the star is never really gone. I can still see it,
faintly outlined by those tape marks. But maybe the kids see more. Maybe the kids think
Mommy's ritual of undecorating the house is an absurd tradition because the spirit of
Christmas still lingers.
After all, Christmas is not about ornaments and garland and lights. Christmas is about
love and new birth and the Light. This is not a new sentiment. What is new,
however, is that this year, when I finally get around to taking down the decorations, the
children will notice. They will notice because they will help me take them down.
Mom says so.
It'll be the beginning of yet another tradition that the kids will see as absurd, since
they'd probably do less damage playing with their Christmas presents.
