Digressions: My Life in 500 Words or Less

January is coming to an end, and February looms on the horizon. This means different things to different people.

For some, it means the evaluation of resolutions made almost a month ago. For others, it means Valentine’s Day is drawing near. Still, to others, the end of the month is just a collection of days on the calendar.

In our home, the end of January prompted us to start thinking about taking down our main Christmas tree. (I say “our main Christmas tree” because we always have multiple Christmas trees during the holidays, and we’ve already taken down the smaller ones.)

Yeah, I know: most people already have taken down their holiday decorations and packed them up. Some might have taken down their decorations immediately after the New Year.

Then there are others who are like Rebecca and me. We have never been in a rush to take down our holiday decorations, much less our main Christmas tree. We took down the other holiday decorations about halfway through January, but the main Christmas tree is another story.

We keep our main Christmas tree up for as long as we’re still feeling the spirit, enjoying it or just not ready to pack it away. In fact, in past years, I believe we’ve had our tree up in February or later.

But it’s time now.

Earlier this week, Rebecca took down the ornaments. The next day, I took the lights off. Last night, the tree was disassembled and packed in boxes and containers.

In some ways I think our practice of keeping up our main Christmas tree indefinitely after the holidays has significance beyond the surface. I believe it has a lot to do with recognition of our own power to determine the parameters of transition in our home.

So many things are out of our control, but some things are not. Acknowledging things that bring us joy is important to us and is not dependent on a calendar. So we enjoy our Christmas tree until we are ready to return our home to its general undecorated state, at which point it gets stored away until the end of the year. (We tend to put it up at the beginning of November, too, and at least some Christmas decorations go up the day after Halloween.)

The Christmas tree makes us happy, and that doesn’t change when the calendar year does.

Putting away the Christmas tree doesn’t mean it no longer brings us joy, it just means we have decided it is time to allow a transition to other forms of joy.

Joy is not seasonal.