Taking all the Christmas stuff down!!!!

, of course

All that work and now it's  time to take it all down...Well I just haven't had enough Christmas for this Year!!! And I never get enough Fruitcake!  Or  twinkly lights, Christmas carols played by a hand bell choir, or sitting in my favorite chair with the room lights dimmed and watching the tree.   It really is true, for me anyway that some of the best Christmas moments  come in the mellow days after New Year.   Epiphany,there is a bit more festivity, which sounds good to me it is the most homey and least rushed.  However, this year the weather changed our plans drastically.

 I used to think, and was often reminded, that I started  decorating much too early...say the 10th of Dec usually.  When the only other people who were putting up lights were those competing in the neighborhood lighting contest.  My parents did compete a few times, and I on the one time I did enter, got an honorable mention, not bad for a beginner. Time was Christmas Eve was a night to travel around and look at the many well decorated and interestingly decorated homes in the small town we lived in then.  The coating for fresh snow reflecting the colors of the lights. I waited for that more than I waited to see what I might find under the tree the next morning.  Christmas gifts are wonderful. But decorating is better.  Next year I will do something different, I tell myself as I slowly take the down the wreaths, Nativity and tree{s} down.  As the sparkling stars and candoliers are carefully placed in their boxes.  Though I may stretch the season out a bit I'm enjoying the warm feeling I have because briefly,  I had my own wonderland, briefly.
 

Gifts are not a big part of our Christmas season, but traditions, memories and good food.  And yes , of course, decorating.  Be it some thing you made in Kindergarten,just bought on sale, or one's latest creation, it is at home with Victorian candle holders, with their original candles, which were lit once upon a time over 100 years ago. stuff found in Thrift stores and yard sales, or stuff I brought back from trips.   The house looks very empty when I have packed everything away.   Soon though there sill be garden catalogs to read and reread, until that day when someone mentions "Christmas in July" .  And I loose  control again.