Putting away Christmas

The night we decorate our Christmas tree is a family event.

“Remember this ornament from the year we moved into our house?”

“Look at this one that Aunt Robin made for us way back before we brought you home from China.”

“Here’s a little owl holding a pretzel. When did we get that?”

We take turns hanging the ornaments, stretching to fill the branches that are high, making sure that special ornaments are secured. As we do, we tell the stories and share the memories of these special decorations for the tree.

Taking the tree down is so different. The children are off playing games, laughing and teasing each other. I’m reading a book when I realize my husband has started pulling the ornaments off the tree.

He asks me to help, and I join him. We lift the ornaments off one by one. A glittering pinecone. A glass angel. A train. A tiny flyswatter. A sparkly icicle—homemade almost 50 years ago. I place them in a box lid, ready for John to pack them carefully away. He will wrap and box them and put them away for almost a year.

I’m never eager to see Christmas end, so I always let John decide when it’s time. I grew up in a household that kept the tree up until my brother’s birthday at the end of February, so I am never ready to say goodbye. When John is ready to turn the page to a post-Christmas life, so am I. Here we go.

At Mass this weekend, the cantor welcomed us for the second Sunday in Ordinary Time. The second Sunday. And so we start on a new beginning, in a new year, in a time where newness brings promise and hope but also carries some of what we already know and have experienced.

It’s a new beginning, but it’s also new in the way that the ornaments we unwrap every December are like new discoveries. They have their stories and their histories, and we retell them as we hang them on the tree. Ordinary Time is full of stories we have heard, but we hear them differently now. The miracle at Cana is warm and familiar, but it’s also magically different to my 2022 ears.

The new is old, and the old is new.

As we’re removing the ornaments from the tree, John notices that one of them is broken. We struggle to remember where that one came from. Was that one a gift from friends, or was it one we found in that little shop at the beach? We don’t know. And next year we might not even remember it.

But we will recall that one ornament broke, as it does almost every year—always a different one, and always with a moment to stop and reflect on what we’ve enjoyed and what we’ve lost.

And we will begin again. Goodbye to Christmas. Hello to the rest of January—and whatever memories we will make next.

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