The Saddest Day of the Year

It's sadly ironic that the "Most Wonderfull Time of the Year" is directly followed by the saddest time of the year.  Families reuniting, mountains of presents, and bountiful feasts are replaced with goodbyes, stacks of new underwear, and new year's resolutions, like...the dreaded diet.  The good news is that I've already lost seven pounds in three days.  The bad news is that I could stand to lose much, much more.  Still, this isn't why yesterday was the saddest day of the year.  Yesterday we took down the Christmas decorations.

Yesterday afternoon, decorations that took a month to put up were neatly stacked in the attic in the space of two hours.  Christmas CDs were put back on the shelf for another eleven long months.  Some I didn't even get around to listening to, like Pavaratti and Harry Connick, Jr.  Some I wore out like Trans Siberian Orchestra, Elvis, Sinatra, and of course the Charlie Brown Christmas CD.  The same applied to DVDs.  I watched It's a Wonderful Life three times, Miracle on 34th Street four times, and The Polar Express at least ten.  All that has been put back in the cabinet.

It's always such a saddening time right after Christmas because there's such a great build up to the big day and of course the night before.  It seems like in the month prior to Christmas, my family had one Christmas activity per night, and to see it all come down like an axe to a redwood is more sobering than I care to think about.

There was the mistletoe above the office door under which I planned to ambush my wife, but never had the guts.  The stockings hung limply on the wall.  The Christmas calendar on the wall was devoid of candy in all of the days' pouches.  The Christmas village sat peacefully on top of the entertainment center, the one-horse sleigh plodding through the snow by the two Victorian hotels on its way to the skating pond and the backwoods cabin whose light had burned out.  Even the Christmas tree was depressing.  We had dubbed it "The Leaning Tree of Ponca" because it just wouldn't stand up straight anymore.  We had already bought a new and bigger one at Wal Mart when they went on sale for 75% off, so this was the last year we were to use our family's first Christmas tree. 

So down it all came.  We took time to meticulously box up all the Hallmark ornaments and carefully wrap the rest in toilet paper.  We played the "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" ornament one last time.  I carefully wrapped my Grandpa Jule's fly-fishing fly pendant, one of only two items I have by which to remember him.  The star fit awkwardly in its old packaging.  The salt dough ornaments which will probably crumble over the summer.  The string of popcorn and cranberries to the trash.  Memories of Midnight Mass becoming just that: distant memories.  Oh the sadness.

So today our living room looks bare, empty.  I recall last May when school was letting out that I would rather it be the Christmas season than summer break, and I think the opinion is still valid.  Now school is about to open its doors for the spring semester, and the next thing to look forward to is...Valentines Day?