Life in the Way

The Fate of a Tree.

It is now January 16 and I have been fighting my children off about taking down our Christmas tree. When the 12 days was over and the Epiphany party complete, I must admit that I was kind of ready to pack up shop and call it Valentine’s Day. We had a great Christmas season. It was a lot of fun. We had parties with lots of goodies and fun conversation. The kids got to play with friends. I think the most amazing thing was that our children maintained the same Christmas morning energy for each of the 12 days as they looked for gifts and opened them. I was worried about the Santa Claus thing because he comes on December 25th, so I didn’t know how it would play out. Well, I was informed by my daughter that he came to our house each night. How special are we? The sad part of the season for me is that it was too short and we couldn’t have everyone we wanted to come over. I am formulating a strategy for that next year, but wonder why it is that I am artificially limiting my party throwing to Christmas. (Well, that is another entry…)

Anyway, it seem that in one year the kids have developed a rhythm about this Christmas thing. No more presents - let’s take down the tree.

Personally, I usually like to leave the tree up until after Valentine’s day. Although, this year I have to admit that I am a little ready to take the tree down. I am not sure why. Was it the fact that I was kind of feeling a little cheated this year (more than in the past few years) without having a real tree.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved the convenience of this new pre-lit wonder that only takes like two minutes to put up, but that takes the challenge of the “tree” out of the holiday. Advent should be full of glorious times that challenge; a time when we attempt to experience a similar emotional state as Mary during her pregnant, 75-100 mile journey on the back of a donkey and celebrate the challenge in all that we do as we fight with the people on the roads, in the stores, and even in our house as one (not me so you’ll have to imagine someone else) attempts to pick out the perfect tree and string lights on it and the direct the children on exactly where to put what Christmas ball on the tree after releasing them from… I digress.

I was thinking next year I’ll just put up a real tree from December 24th to January 6th. I don’t know… What do you do?

Tags: Christmas, Random Thoughts, Seasonal