The Christmas decorations are down, so I guess that’s a wrap on the whole holiday thing.
Now, it’s just one long, slow crawl through winter, and then — hopefully — we stand up, shake ourselves off and find that, at long last, spring has arrived.
Well, to be honest, it’s not that long of a crawl. A couple months really. And there really isn’t any crawling involved. That would be silly. Who wants to spend the winter crawling around waiting for spring?
Sure, I did that once, but I was in college and I wasn’t really waiting for spring,
I was just trying to make it back to my dorm from the Red Lion bar in Emporia, Kansas.
So except for the part about the Christmas decorations being down and the holidays being over, let’s say we agree to ignore that stuff about the long, slow crawl.
The Christmas decorations came down, as they always do, on New Year’s Day. There was a time in my life when I spent New Year’s Day in bed trying to recover from New Year’s Eve, but that was a long time ago.
This past New Year’s Eve, my wife and I sat on the couch and watched CNN anchors make fools of themselves while we waited for our 20-year-old daughter to get home from a party.
There wasn’t much to recover from this New Year’s Day, is what I’m saying.
By the way, what moron at CNN decided it would be a good idea to let CNN news people host New Year’s Eve shows, drink on camera and generally make fools of themselves? The only reason my wife and I watched the show was because it was such a train wreck.
And at the risk of offending my conservative friends out there, I like the CNN news people. I think they do great work. I just don’t think they should be hosting New Year’s Eve shows.
Can you imagine (warning to young people: Incredibly dated TV news reference coming) Walter Cronkite and Andy Rooney co-hosting a New Year’s Eve show?
“And that’s the way is Tuesday, Dec. 31, 196 — hey Rooney whada do with my (bad word) martini?”
Every year, my wife spends hours putting up Christmas decorations and then, on New Year’s Day, I spend hours helping her take those same decorations down, hauling to the basement and then putting up winter decorations.
How are Christmas decorations different from winter decorations, you ask?
I asked my wife the same question, and this is what she said:
“They just are. That’s how.”
So there.
Actually, I didn’t so much take the Christmas decorations down as I did stand around and wait until my wife filled a box with decorations. Then, when the box had been filled and the lid placed on it, I carried it to our basement, then I came back upstairs and waited for my wife to fill another box with Christmas decorations.
It wasn’t as fun as it sounds.
We also had to take the ornaments off the Christmas tree, put them away and then haul the Christmas tree outside where it will sit until I remember to take it to the landfill. Often, it’s spring before I remember to take the Christmas tree to the landfill. And by then, it’s not so much a tree as it is a dry stick.
My wife said that it always makes her sad to have to take down the Christmas decorations.
For my wife, the end of the holiday season signifies the passage of time and brings back memories of past holidays.
For me, the end of the holiday seasons signifies the beginning of the NFL playoffs and college basketball conference play.
I guess it’s a yin and yang thing.
Well, I’m done here. Time to crawl to the refrigerator and get a beer.