Christmas can't loiter

Well, that was fast. Just more than 24 hours after the last present was opened and the last bit of packaging recycled, Christmas officially ended in the Breen house like it always does -- in a whirlwind clean-up that returns the house to normal. As much as we love the holiday -- you have to if you have a tree in your living room, family room, kitchen AND youngest son's room -- we don't want it to loiter. The tradition in our house is to put away anything Christmas-related on the 26th. Every indoor Santa, stocking, tree, light and card is gathered, packaged and returned to the storage unit, not to be seen until next December. It's not as much cathartic as it is refreshing. Putting away Christmas is like remodeling the house or getting a new wardrobe. The holiday spirit came and went and now the new year is looming, so the fresh start of shooing away Christmas is a perfect segue. It might seem to some that our family doesn't do the holiday justice because we let it go so quickly. But in reality, we aren't letting it go; we're just telling it "thanks for visiting, see you next year, we've got bowl games to watch." What's that dear? I haven't put away the exterior holiday decorations? I'll get to those right after the bowl games. Where's your Christmas spirit? (photo courtesy of Pescatello's Photostream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikelewis/4172929614/)

A Christmas lights inferiority tale

If there were a Christmas Tree Lane in my town, it would be my street. Starting on Thanksgiving and gearing up in earnest this past weekend, our quiet, tree-lined residential byway becomes a slow-motion highway of holiday revelers driving 3 mph up and down the road to check out the cool holiday displays. It's really cool to live on such a festive street, as it makes every nighttime sojourn to the store or to basketball practice a trip through a (California) winter wonderland. Most of the homes on my street are of the two-story variety and three-fourths of them are strung with lights and festooned with every possible Christmas-y decoration, from mangers to wooden character cutouts to inflatable snow globes. On any other street in any other town, my house would be appropriately decorated. Our nicely-decorated living room Christmas tree fills the front window and two small, lighted Christmas trees border our garage door. Our gutter is lined by a string of lights that is simple, yet festive and we soon will drape some bushes with white lights and place a lighted snowman in the front yard. But compared to the rest of my street, my house is the Charlie Brown Christmas tree: simple, bare, sparse, yet symbolic of the season. Despite peer pressure from my sons that we add enough lights so that our home is visible to the International Space Station, we will keep it simple and modest, even if it means our driveway remains the turnaround point for holiday lights gazers. Simplicity was good enough for Charlie, and it's good enough for me. Good grief. (Photo courtesy of Ted Murphy's Photostream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/tedmurphy/3068154256/)