Those few days following Christmas can often seem almost empty. Sure, there is some excitement about the new year and the New Year holiday. And I even think there is something a little relieving about getting one’s living room back to its usual way once the tree is gone and the decorations boxed and stored away.
But there is an edge to the refresh.
Christmas is over. The cheerful season full of holiday tunes and merriment – gone until next year.
The month of December flew by, and now it is time to haul out the Christmas tree, wind up the lights, and get on to January.
It’s sad. At least for me.
I enjoy making new year resolutions and looking forward in life instead of backwards. But these short days following that favorite day of the year¸ I find it hard not to look back. Not to look back and feel overall jipped for how speed-of-lightning quick the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas seemed to fly.
And now it’s all over, again, until next year….
That is how I used to think, and how I think most people live out their winter: Christmas is a rush and then it’s over, then January sets in.
Really, is it any wonder why January epitomizes the wintertime blues?
A Short Time to Celebrate
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, and those who know me call me a Grinch about Christmas if its before that grateful holiday at the end of each November.
I absolutely love Christmas and the Christmas season. But I have no appreciation for Christmas music in September or for box-office decorations in October.
That said, celebrating Christmas with the lights, the tree, favorite holiday goodies, and filling the air with classic Christmas tunes does not happen in our home until the turkey is deboned and the pies are eaten.
Whether it starts Thursday night or Friday morning, our family’s worldly celebration of Christmas waits for Thanksgiving.
This allows time to celebrate each holiday, to give both holidays my focus. Gratitude for the harvest, for home, for family. Then a celebration of the greatest gift ever given to this world.
The only hiccup is it leaves just four short weeks to celebrate the most wonderful time of the year!
Putting aside the ups and downs of gift finding, gift making, gift baking, and gift giving – setting all of that aside – four weeks goes too fast.
I am a Christian, who treasures the opportunity December gives me to reflect on Jesus Christ and his miraculous birth.
I love hearing Christmas carols and singing them off-tune in the best way I know how. I love the decorations that symbolize that first Christmas night. Setting up my collection of nativities and re-telling the Christmas story.
Those are all yearly traditions that I love to do this time of year.
Like so many of you, I have a pocketful of traditions that really bring that special Christmas light into my heart.
I love to focus on the true meaning of Christmas, on our Savior, Jesus Christ. As a mother of littles and as just a person in our modern world, I also hold some appreciation for the “fun” of Christmas.
Keeping up the magic of Santa Clause, watching the classic clay-cartoons, watching ultra-cheesy holiday Hallmarks (why…? I still haven’t figured that one out. Just one of those silly little things I enjoy without any logical understanding as to why). Listening to my favorites Christmas songs over and over. Baking tons of Christmas goodies and taking treats to my neighbors.
All the little things that help build the magic.
Keeping the Spirit
Over the years, I have found myself not just exhausted those first four weeks in December trying to juggle and fit in all the many Christmasy things that my heart so childishly wants to do. But after all the exhaustion, I fin myself turning around in those few days after Christmas Day feeling sorry that the season is over.
It never lasts long enough.
And for those of you with the word “simplify” on your minds and my mention of exhaustion – Yes, simplification is often the thing we most need in life.
But rather than cutting out all of my favorite Christmas to-dos for lack of time before that blessed day, I have found that I can, in fact, do all my favorite Christmas things if I expand my Christmas season.
Now, this idea of expanding the Christmas season is not at all unique. Many people do this. Commercial businesses have been doing it for decades. They simply set up the Christmas tree and start up the lights the day after Halloween.
But as I pointed out above, I love Thanksgiving. And stepping over it year-after-year to usher in Christmas a full month early seems … well, just not what I want to do.
There’s also the factor of harvest.
Living in the West, garden harvest and preservation is often still in full-swing those first weeks of November.
When I think of Christmas, I personally think of snow, or at least solid frost mornings (though this year’s weather patterns are certainly contradicting all of that imagery). But Christmas is still associated with winter. Not fall.
When I speak of expanding my Christmas season, I am not referring to moving it forward in order to celebrate it longer. I refer to celebrating it in the season, and then letting it stay.
When the new year comes, my tree stays up. So do my Christmas lights. I play Christmas music and watch Christmas classics (or cheesy films) through the month of January.
And the baked goods? Oh, yeah. They stay too. Not to totally baffle my waist line (though there is a little of that happening), but to also help me spread my sweet tooth eating to save myself a tummy ache. Because, yes, I am that much of a child. I will totally eat more sweets than I should and give myself a belly ache.
Christmas at our house goes from Black Friday (the day after Christmas) to January 25. And I think I will keep it that way.
Afterall, I see no reason why that favorite time of year can’t last a little longer.
