Taking Down the Christmas Decorations

Having survived 2020 and happily sent it packing, it’s now time for the ritual of taking down the Christmas decorations and the tree. A transition from the holiday season to the reality and promise of a new year.

For me, taking the tree down is a bit sad. I enjoy having the live, decorated tree in the living room. It’s festive, and comforting in a way. And one of our cats loves to drink water from the pitcher I use to water the tree each day. She waits for me under the tree and gets really excited when she sees me holding the pitcher. Once I’ve given the tree a drink, she sticks her head in the pitcher and laps up the fresh, cool water. She also dips her paw in to scoop out water and drinks it from between the pads. That’s fun to watch as we’ve never seen a cat do that. She will be very confused when the tree comes down, and both of us a bit sad at the end of our little ritual until next Christmas.

The outside lights and wreaths also need to come down. There’s a balancing act of not taking them down immediately after New Year’s Day but not leaving them up too long. A lot depends on the weather. It’s no fun doing all that when it’s really cold or having to tromp around in the snow. Luckily, around here the weather is supposed to be pretty mild this week, and being retired I don’t have to wait for next weekend or try to squeeze it in between Zoom calls.

Last but not least, all the containers of Christmas decorations need to get stuffed back in the crawl space until next year. The final step in the transition to the new year. This step is symbolic to me of closing out the old year, and it creates space for the new year to come into our home and our lives.

I hope you all enjoyed the holidays, that you took time to reflect on the good that was in 2020 and made some new memories to carry forward. Wishing you all a happy and healthy 2021, with hope that this year we all come together to make things better – “Be the joy you want to see in the world”.