BC and I just finished taking down our skinny Christmas tree that spent most of December in a cozy little corner of our patio. That pencil tree is disassembled, the ornaments--mostly made by children long since grown--are wrapped in decades old tissue paper and stored on a shelf in our garage.
The two newer three foot trees that grace the buffet which defines our entry way are also safely tucked away in their box. The little gold sparkly balls that Target featured a few Christmas' ago are lined up in their plastic bags and the White House ornaments--a slowly growing collection--have been placed quite gently in their elaborate boxes which, if truth be told, probably cost more to produce than the ornaments themselves. White House ornaments are gorgeous, though, and I love them.
When I was growing up, the Christmas season ended on the Feast of Epiphany which, if I'm remembering correctly, was the sixth of January. That was the date the Church chose to mark when the Three Wise Men arrived at the stable which housed Baby Jesus. Never mind that the Wise Men may have arrived with their gold, frankincense and myrrh months, if not years, after Jesus was born. In our family, it was the sixth of January and that date signaled the tearing down and packing away of all things Christmas. And there was always a lot of Christmas at our house.
My Mom loved to decorate. She collected pine cones, spray-painted them gold and scattered them all through the house. As the years passed, she spray-painted more and more things gold until we joked that even the dog wasn't safe. She tied red bows on all sorts of objects--candlesticks, candles, door knobs and, regarding this project, she did decorate the dog. It was wonderful. I loved it all and thought that ours was one of the prettiest decorated houses ever.
I don't know how she felt when the decorations came down--it was usually a school day and she had finished before I got home. I remember thinking the house looked very plain without the green tree, gold pine cones and red bows. The sparkle was missing and life was very ordinary again.
I do know how I felt when Epiphany rolled around. Especially when the kids were young, I dreaded it. It was a sad day full of melancholy because my babies were growing up much too quickly. Another year had flown by and I hadn't appreciated all of its varied moments. I have a tendency to remember the bad rather than the good, and I could absolutely wallow in self-pity and self-flagellation at my short-comings for most of that day. I would tear up as I reached for an especially sentimental ornament. I would sob when I thought how impatient I had been with one or another of my sweet children.. I would vow to be a better mother, wife and person-in-general, and kick myself for not producing the picture perfect Christmas for my family. It was awful. I remember everyone of those January's...like it was yesterday.
Today, I'm sorry, but it's true, I was relieved to de-clutter the little bit of Christmas decorating we had done and return to our normal, rather minimalist lifestyle. Perhaps with age, we look forward more than back. We have a limited horizon and we've learned we can't change our past. The tricky exercise is learning to accept that past with only a reasonable amount of regret. Some do it better than others, but that may be my Epiphany on this Epiphany Eve. Acceptance. It isn't approval nor disapproval. It's simply what it is...part of who and what we are.
And that, as my mother used to say, is the lesson for the day.
1 comment:
LOVED this post! As one of those children you were worried about, I never ended the year thinking about the negative or that our Christmas wasn't all that it could have been. I remember Christmas being a big deal in our house and always a lot of fun. Also loved the stories about Grandma's decorations and your epiphany of today. It is what it is and we just try to move onward and upward from here.
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