Undecorating

     Last year at this time, our house was empty of Christmas decorations.  One of our children had been in the hospital over the holiday, and I didn’t want the reminders of that time all around me.  The family is well this year, and our decorations are still up, despite the fact that the Feast of Epiphany has come and gone.

     Epiphany is when we celebrate the arrival of the magi at the stable in Bethlehem.*  It, like Christmas, is a fixed feast, arriving every year on the sixth of January.  When Epiphany and the wise men arrive, Christmas decorations traditionally come down.  Notably, at church, parishioners are encouraged to take poinsettia plants home with them. 

     There are a lot of poinsettias in the church for Christmas, mostly red, but other colors, too.  They look exuberant and joyful, just the ticket for rejoicing at the birth of a child.  Come Epiphany, though, they leave for new homes.  You can always tell that our church has celebrated Epiphany by the stream of flowers that comes out the doors when the service is over.**

     There are signs of un-decorating around the neighborhood.  Some of them are not subtle.  The Inflatable Apocalypse is evident on every street.  Where previously stood cheery cartoonish deer and Santas and elves in robust air-filled health, flattened critters now lie unbreathing on lawns.  Some are even face down.  I find it distressing:  the poor guys look dead and un-cared-for. 

     Christmas trees lying out by the curb on lawn extensions don’t affect me the same way.  They don’t look dead.  Perhaps that’s because they’re evergreens.  In some instances, though, their ever-greenness has been enhanced with what looks like spray paint. 

     The city used to send trucks around to collect the cast-off trees, trundling them off to be turned into wood chips.  The chips were then made available to any Ann Arborites willing to come get them.  The city still makes the wood chips, but you have to drop your tree off yourself.  Either way, the practice leads to the occasional glimpse of a festive strand of tinsel along a woodland path, which brings a smile to passersby.

     Flattened cardboard boxes filled the recycling bins waiting for curbside pickup again this week.    Many of the bins are so full that the lids won’t close, so the boxes are easily visible.  One house had a porch covered with opened boxes.  Did the kids request their parents not to flatten and recycle them just yet?  Is the family indulging cats with seasonal entertainment?  Was the recycling bin just too full to accommodate another porchful of boxes?  This will remain a Christmas clean-up mystery.

     My favorite sign of undecorating appeared this morning, while the dog and I were out making our rounds.  Movement in someone’s living room caught my eye, through the picture window.  The Christmas tree was wiggling as if a squirrel were running around in it.  As someone who’s had squirrels in the house a number of times, I paused to see if our next task was going to be rousing this household to let them know of a calamity at hand.             

     No, thank goodness.  As the dog and I stood there, it became clear that someone was removing strings of lights from the tree.  They weren’t dawdling about it, either.  The person was clearly ready for the tree to be gone from the living room.

     I’m in no hurry to undecorate this year.  Some of the peripheral bits can go, I suppose.  But the trees are staying up, and we’re watering the poinsettia that moved in here after church last Sunday.

     Lots of neighbors have left their exterior Christmas lights up, and that’s just fine with us.  We enjoy them.  They lift our spirits during the grey days of winter.  It would be all right with us if folks kept them up until, say, Valentine’s Day.  Or better yet, until leaves and flowers started appearing in the spring.  Maybe rebranding is in order.  If people thought of them as winter lights, instead of Christmas lights, maybe householders who don’t celebrate Christmas would put them up, too, and we’d all benefit.

10 January 2025

*Speaking of which, our rector informed us in his sermon last Sunday that the Bible does not specify the number of magi.  There were three gifts, and there may have been three magi.  There may have been twelve.  We sang “We Three Kings” later in the service anyway.

**Also, no doubt, by the trail of dried poinsettia leaves on the sidewalks.  Those caring for the poinsettias tend to ease off a bit on the watering before folks are invited to carry the plants away.