It’s Over… Sigh.
Oh, December 26th- it’s typically a hard day for me. Over the years I’ve come up with different coping strategies, but before I get into that, let’s talk about this year’s Christmas tree. We always get a real tree right around Thanksgiving. This year, about a week before Christmas I noticed that our tree seemed VERY dry. And kind of droopy. Basically, any branch that had an ornament on it was drooping down sadly, like the Charlie Brown tree. What the…?????? We suspect that, in addition to selling us a $200 tree, the tree lot also sold us inferior tree food. We usually get some sort of liquid that we add to the tree water, but this time the food they sold us turned into a gel. For the first week after we got the tree I kept trying to add water, but it didn’t need any… which seemed odd. Usually the tree absorbs a LOT of water in the first few days. Hmmm. Anyway, by Festivus the lower branches were so dropped, we couldn’t fit any presents under it, so I asked my son to cut them off. I was making dinner while he was trimming the tree, when suddenly I heard him say “OOPS.” Uh oh… He accidentally cut through the strand of lights- as he said, “Now I know why they make the light wire green- it’s to blend in with the tree branches!” Er, yes! And now our tree was totally dark. But! Remember how I never got the lights up in our bushes? Because of that I had extra strands, which luckily matched our tree lights. I gave my son the task of unwinding the damaged lights and replacing them (again, he said “Now I know why you put the lights on FIRST.”) He had to un-decorate half the tree to re-do the lights. So many life lessons here! In the end, all was well, but we felt that the tree was barely going to make it through Christmas Day before crumbling to the ground. Which brings me to the topic of taking down Christmas… I don’t have a set way of doing it. Sometimes I do it before New Year’s, sometimes I do it after… any way I do it, it makes me sad. But THIS year, I think it will be a relief to get that tree down (maybe that’s a great post-Christmas hack- have a tree that basically self-destructs after Christmas Day.) So I’ll do the tree first, ASAP. I’ll leave everything else up at least through New Year’s. My card display will stay up for a while! Last year I left white lights in the living room through the month of January, and that helped a lot. I’m also going to take out some new mugs (one from San as my Secret Santa gift!) when I put away the holiday mugs, and I have a new candle I’ve been saving as well. I can do all these things, in addition to keeping busy- that definitely helps- but in the end I know I’m going to be sad. But you know what? That’s life. I guess if I didn’t love Christmas as much as I do, and didn’t get so excited about it, I wouldn’t feel as sad when it’s over. So, I wouldn’t change a thing. What’s your schedule for un-decorating the house? Does it make you sad or do you like the way it feels less cluttered? Any other tips for mitigating PCD (Post Christmas Depression?)