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Christmas 2023

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 Christmas comes but once a year---or so we were told many years ago.  But it seems with the ever-increasing rate at which we proceed through the days, weeks, and years of the calendar, Christmas must now come twice a year.

Looking around on December 23, it appears that we have taken down all the Christmas decorations and stowed them away for another year.  But no, that can't be true, it must have been that we never dragged the decorations out of the closet and put them on display.  Display, display, that's the key word.  We recall that we were going to decorate the gate at the road front but decided against this display because so few travelers or neighbors come down our dead-end street that it would not be worthwhile.  Must be the same for all the decorations in the house because they never made it out of the closet this year.  That sure makes putting them back in the closet mid-January an easy task.

When visiting the surrounding towns, it is apparent that decorating for Christmas is way down this year.  Could it be that society has also not pulled Christmas decorations out of the closet?  And if so, for what reason?  Are people too busy with the daily grind?  Is the mood not one of "tis the season to be jolly"?  Have we become so tribalistic that none of the old traditions are deemed to be representative of the population?

As for us, we put our Christmastime energies into making a special Christmas card to communicate with our friends and creating handmade gifts for the children less fortunate--all to be distributed by the local sheriff's office under the program of Brown Santa.  If we had just so much energy to either put up our Christmas decorations in the house or do this other more creative work, what better could we choose?

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