The unadorned room
Seems shabbier than before
The season of joy.
Undecorated.
Stripped of its festive layers,
The room is naked.
Reduced to a husk,
From which to flower again
And face a new year.
January 5th, always feels to me like one of the saddest days of the year. Christmas has become a period I've looked forward to more and more over the last decade or so, but even when I didn't hold much stock by Yuletide, I still hated the day when the decorations had to come down.
Today I went around the house, slowly removing the festive decorations, undoing the lights and taking the baubles off the tree. Eventually, I squeezed the newly naked Nordmann Fir out of the nearest window, and took it off to the local Scout hut where it will be used for woodmanship practice. I returned to our newly un-Spruced lounge, and hoovered up the remaining traces of needle and tinsel. I looked around the sparse rooms which I had created, but didn't feel quite as depressed as I have in years gone by.
Maybe, in the same way that Christmas has grown on me, Twelfth Night won't groan on me anymore. Maybe I'm learning to greet a new year with my room clear.
We still have our decorations up, since the grandkids are finally deigning to visit today and I thought they might like to see the the blooming things (Bit daft going to all that trouble just for the two of us). But, yes, it does usually look bare after. I actually quite like decorating the living rooms; wish there was some other excuse. I found a way to cheer myself up yesterday post-Xmas - had my first hot cross bun for tea!
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