Christmas Day has come and gone. Unless one observes Epiphany, 12 days after Christmas, most of us now set aside time to take down Christmas, a necessary chore, one that I don’t really looking forward to. Like returning home from a trip, it’s never as much fun to unpack dirty clothes as it is to prepare for an upcoming adventure. But, Christmas must come down.
Or must it? I’ve thought about keeping the tree, the table centerpiece, the other decorations in place. I like Christmas. I like the brightly shining lights and shiny ornaments. I like the aromas of live evergreens and cinnamon. I like Christmas carols, cards and letters. However, I don’t like the tired sight when others leave drooping decorations up in their yards year round. I have thought better of my momentary insanity.
Taking down Christmas allows us time to reflect. Decorating for Christmas in December often comes when we’re at our busiest and it’s merely another chore to accomplish.
In disassembling our tree, I first remove the white felt skirt covered with beaded nine-inch tall appliqués of candles and bells that my mother had painstakingly stitched by hand. In lifting the cloth from its place of honor, fond memories of Christmases past tumbled over me. My mother loved to sew; I do not. Every Christmas until I married, my mother made me a new dress for Christmas. Until I outgrew playing with dolls, she also made a matching dress for Susie Q. Of the countless dresses my doll and I wore, my favorite remains a steel blue wool trimmed with white angora yarn.
Next, I take down ornaments one by one. Because we have been given so many over the years, we never have bought ornaments to create a themed tree. I always start with the one our neighbor gave my husband and me as newlyweds 56 years ago. She crafted diorama ornaments from real egg shells by covering the partial oval in velvet and fixing a miniature scene inside. Ours, covered in green velvet, surrounds tiny shepherds. Next comes the fragile ornament of a fire place with five stockings that our daughter gave us the year they married. Each stocking is named.
As our children established their own homes, we gave them the ornaments they had made or been given. Although those collections are gone, we still have two white shells, each with a Christmas decal on it, that our nephew and niece made when they, too, were young. The rest have come from friends and my former students. Each brings its own memory.
Next, I unwind pearl-like strands of garland which we bought to decorate the tables at the rehearsal dinner for our younger son and his wife in Pensacola. I copied the table decorations that an Albany restaurant had used in decorating the tables at the rehearsal dinner for older son and his wife.
Finally, I unwrapped the red, green, blue, gold and purple lights from the tree. After our children left home, we bought our first artificial tree. Last year, we replaced it with a five-foot tree made in the U. S. A. However, since it wasn’t pre-lit, we had to purchase lights and had to settle for lights made elsewhere. I know the first trees were lit with candles but decorated Christmas trees during my life time have been with strands of electric lights. While we covered our trees with only red lights for a few years, we returned to the multicolored lights of our childhoods with this purchase. I am reminded of the late Maya Angelou’s observation, “I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he or she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage and tangled Christmas lights.”
So many Christmas memories are wrapped around the Christmases of our own childhood and those of our own children. Multicolored lights always remind me of those simple, happy moments when the family gathers around the tree, not necessarily to open presents, but rather just to be together. I always wonder what memories our children hold about their Christmases growing up. There was little glitz and glamour, but each should recall assuming at least one role in a nativity play at our church.
I don’t pack my memories away with the decorations. They stay close by to reappear suddenly whenever prompted by an incident, a program, a casual remark. Although Christmas comes once a year, our celebrations are a conglomerate of all the happy and sad moments of our Christmases past.
One of my friends says that her favorite time of the year comes after all of the ornaments and decorations are packed away and the house is swept, dusted and mopped clean. In agreement with author Nancy Thayer, who says, “the new year is a celebration of the victory of order over chaos,” my friend appreciates the freshness of starting anew at the beginning of each year.
I pack away all of Christmas except for the large ceramic nativity scene resembling wood carvings. I removed the blue cloth I had placed under it and pushed it to the back of the cabinet from its place of prominence at the front during the holy season. But even with the move, the three wise men, the angels, Mary, Joseph and the Babe in the Manger remain visible. I like being able to see this image year round.
Although we pack away the decorations, we should never pack away the message of Christmas. The love, the kindness, the way we treat one another, whether family or friends or strangers, should guide our daily living. If we make donations to charities at Christmas time, should not those same souls be our concern year round?
Likewise, as my friend and the psalmist both say, may this Christmas have created in us all “a clean heart and a right spirit” to direct our lives daily throughout the new year.
2014
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