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Robin Writes: Christmas Un-Decorating

Posted on Wednesday, January 4, 2023 at 6:16 am

By Robin Garrison Leach

If Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year, the first days of January must be the most miserable. Why? Is it the weather? The defeated feeling of having already broken every resolution you made New Year’s Eve?

Or the fact that most of the Christmas toys you bought the kids just a few weeks ago either need new batteries or have lost key pieces?

No. It’s the Christmas decorations. They have to come down. There is no more dreaded job in my house. I’d rather clean the lint trap of my dryer with tweezers. I’d rather scrub the toilet with a toothbrush.

Why, oh why, did I put so much STUFF on that tree? What possessed me to sprinkle jolly holiday knickknacks all over the house? When I walk around my home, it’s as if each little ceramic Santa is ‘Ho-Ho’-ing and pointing a furry mitten my way:

‘Time to wrap us up and stuff us into boxes and put those boxes in larger boxes and tape those boxes shut and carry those boxes up those rickety stairs into the dank attic!’ they hiss.

Innocent Angel eyes take on malevolent glints. They’ve done all the heralding they’re gonna do this winter. Glitter is lying around the bottoms of their robes like geriatric dandruff. When I walk past them, I sometimes think I see a harp shaking as if to come crashing across an angelic knee.

Will a halo come spinning toward my head one of these January mornings, slicing their message of sinful scorn at my refusal to return them to their boxes?

It has to be done. I have to get the tree out of the living room. There is no room to get from the couch to the front door without stepping across the piano bench. I didn’t mind a couple weeks ago. Now, I absolutely refuse to navigate an obstacle course to leave my home.

The last few days I’ve been maneuvering past the tree with no regard for all the ornaments that tinkle against each other when my backside flips them into a manic spin. They were precious keepsakes in December—all shiny and full of nostalgia.

But now, in January, I’m dreaming of a rifle filled with gravelly buckshot. One BLAM, and they’d all be vacuum-able confetti.

I have just enough goodwill left in my bones to repack the trimmings and trappings and just enough energy left to vacuum up the wormy tinsel that’s slithered its way into every room of the house.

I pulled a strand from my hairbrush this morning. Or maybe that was more gray hair.

For the complete column, see this week’s edition of the Centralia Fireside Guard.