It’s only 350 days ’til next Christmas

The Christmas tree has been denuded. Brittle, pointy, holly clusters are in the trash. Memories of younger days before empty nester time are floating rampant, like the ghosts of Christmas past, which they are! This year’s deconstruction went pretty smoothly with limited cursing by the man of the house as ornaments refused to be removed from branches. One of the all-time better Christmas albums, Mary Chapin Carpenter’s Come Darkness, Come Light: Twelve Songs of Christmas, lent an appropriate background to the day’s activities.

all gone goodbye for now

Photo by J. Harrington

Between now and Valentine’s we’ll celebrate MLK day and groundhog day and, with luck, an extended January thaw. But, for a few days, the magic of Christmas will be conspicuous by its absence, unless we learn to keep the feeling of Christmas in our hearts all year round. How hard could that be?

carrying the light of Christmas to Valentine's

Photo by J. Harrington

We had advent and Yule candles this year and we’re going to carry over two of them, the red ones in the hurricane lamps, until Valentine's. The cheery flames at dinner will serve as reminders of yule time and help warm our hearts through the cold days ahead. It’s not everything, but it’s a start.

Taking Down the Tree

By Jane Kenyon

"Give me some light!" cries Hamlet's

uncle midway through the murder

of Gonzago. "Light! Light!" cry scattering

courtesans. Here, as in Denmark,

it's dark at four, and even the moon

shines with only half a heart.

The ornaments go down into the box:

the silver spaniel, My Darling

on its collar, from Mother's childhood

in Illinois; the balsa jumping jack

my brother and I fought over,

pulling limb from limb. Mother

drew it together again with thread

while I watched, feeling depraved

at the age of ten.

With something more than caution

I handle them, and the lights, with their

tin star-shaped reflectors, brought along

from house to house, their pasteboard

toy suitcases increasingly flimsy.

Tick, tick, the desiccated needles drop.

By suppertime all that remains is the scent

of balsam fir. If it's darkness

we're having, let it be extravagant.

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