Un-decorating Depression

Sadly today I removed all the sparkle and glitter of Christmas from the house. If truth be told I started yesterday with all the non-tree house decorations and finished today with the tree. If truth really be told, I am not done with the tree yet, just all the ornaments off the tree.

This year before Christmas I gave my mother an artificial tree because I knew she would enjoy having a tree up without an of the annoying upkeep – watering and sweeping up fallen needles, a real tree requires. One of the huge benefits of a fake tree is it looks as nice on day 30 as it did on day one. My father so enjoyed the glow from the tree he asked my mother if they could just keep it up all year.

I’m with my dad. I love the light from the strings of small bulbs on the tree. Of course, with the 12,000 or so lights I have on my tree it is more like a beacon. But in the dark and dreary days of winter the lights ward off seasonal disorder. Not only does the house look bare and boring without the Christmas decorations filling every available space, but even the newly decorated rooms feel unfinished.

It hardly seems right to do all the un-decorating at the same time I am detoxing from Christmas sugar and flour overload. It’s like a one-two punch. I should have planned my timing better and either stated my removal of sugar from my system earlier or waited until I was in full-blown diet euphoria after losing the first five pounds to take the decorations down.

I wish that decoration putting away was more exercise then at least I would feel some sort of accomplishment from that. Sadly, going up the ladder to get the ornaments at the top of the tree hardly counts as many steps now that I use a basket to gather them in before descending to pack them in the plastic hinged-top crates.

The worst part of the job is the divorce inducing breaking apart of the fourteen foot tree. That job will wait until tomorrow when Russ and Carter will both swear they hate Christmas because it is so hard to pull the sections apart and stuff them into obese body sized bags and take them up to the attic.

Since they complain so much about this job I don’t dare ask them to help me do any of the decorating or un-decorating, since if it were up to them they say they would skip decorating all together. They say this, but I know they secretly enjoy the house in the shinny and glittery state. They just know not tell me how much they like it.

So hello to winter doldrums — The only good news is today was the first day without rain in Durham in quite a long time. Of course all that rain has put us squarely in the mud season. Only eleven more months until I can put the tree back up. I can hardly wait.