The holidays are over. Phew! While it was great fun loading and unloading the dishwasher over 63 times, arranging and rearranging furniture to accommodate dinner guests, and finger-bleeding gift wrapping sessions I had an epiphany! Christmas ain’t what it use to be! More work, more money and less wide-eyed anticipation. Even the reindeer have become high maintenance requiring glitter-laden food and organic baby carrots. To add insult to injury, I can’t remember the last time I was kissed under the mistletoe. (maybe it has something to do with the fact that the mistletoe adorning my doorway is faded plastic, missing a few berries and about 20 years old.) My nativity is gnawed and chewed by a dog I had some 30 years ago and for sentimental reasons I have not replaced it. I am never quite sure, as I place it under the tree each year, if I keep it because it was the first one we owned as a married couple, or I am glad the dog that gnawed it along with the woodwork is long dead.
I am carefully nursing my Christmas cactus that miraculously bloomed after sitting dormant on my windowsill since last year and now in order to keep those pretty pink blooms, well…blooming I had to devise a watering and fertilizing schedule. I wish it had died along with the pussy willow and ivy I tried to save from the winter frost. I now have three beautiful plants on my dining room table, two poinsettias and an orchid. They don’t stand a chance in hell.
My outdoor Christmas decorations are buried in snow. The littlest of my reindeer family blinks laboriously under the drift. The 50% off K-Mart snowflakes I bought after Christmas last year still twinkle in my window and although my tree is lit and standing it has shifted dangerously to the right apparently terrifying the angel tree topper. There are a sad few gifts left under the tree as I have put away everything but the holiday bloomers I get every year from my friend. (Nothing says Christmas like a bloomer with holly on it!) I waited for Little Christmas less commonly known as the Celebration of the Epiphany. (there’s that word again..!) Today, January 6th commemorates the last day of the Christmas holiday season. That is what I am waiting for…..that and the fact that my son, the one that moved to Queens last year, the one that takes the Christmas boxes out of the attic for me, is apparently busy. I used to do this myself. I climbed the wooden attic stairs that now creak under my weight, crawled on knees that just don’t do crawling anymore, and one by one brought up and down the multitude of boxes marked….what else, Christmas. My husband suggested that he get the boxes down, but then again he is the one that suggested he fix the storm door that the UPS man broke last year. The one that still isn’t fixed. So I think I may be in charge of box-getting this year.
I cannot listen to another version of Silent Night or Jingle Bells or even Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer without wanting to tear the ears off the side of my head. The life-sized Santa I bought in Target that terrorized my grandsons when they were younger has been unplugged so that his Ho Ho Ho doesn’t make me Heave Heave Heave him out with the trash. Christmas mugs, dishtowels and pot holders have over-taken my kitchen and I admittedly miss my embarrassingly soiled, burnt and ripped ones that got put away while snowmen and candy canes replaced them for the season. The decorative holiday pillows on my couch that I strategically placed for the first three weeks are now askew and I dare say slept on by my stinky dog. I will throw them in the wash and if some of them don’t fair so well in the rinse cycle, they will just never make it back into the attic boxes marked…Christmas. I am sick of avoiding the chocolate santas, the candy canes, and the honey balls (of course with the most honey) that are stuck to the bottom of the snowman plate.
I have stopped trying to figure out how recycle the Christmas cards. I have stopped trying to light the bayberry candle that has no wick left. I have stopped shopping the 70% off ‘all Christmas’ aisle in Walgreens. I have stopped believing my epiphany…..I love Christmas!
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