Christmas Dichotomy

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 I’m packing up the Christmas stuff today, and I’m struck by the dichotomy of the time pre and post Christmas.

Pre-Christmas, my children helped me decorate. I hardly had a second to look at the ornaments before they placed them on the tree (and only briefly again when I rearranged so they weren’t all in two spots. Parents, you get me.) I didn’t notice the ornaments that had been tucked into the corner of the box, unnoticed for the past two Christmases, reminding me of my past life. The ornaments, and the life, I thought I’d hidden, given, or thrown away. The life I want to forget as much as I want to remember. Dichotomy. 

Pre-Christmas, we are busy preparing, hustling, cooking, shopping, and searching. For what? For the magic of the season we are so actively creating, and also avoiding? Dichotomy. 

And here I am, in the post Christmas aftermath of pine needles and glitter and ornaments I love, and other ornaments I want to drop into the trash as much as I want to pack up to remember another Christmas. Not next Christmas, but maybe a Christmas another life away. I had the time to notice this contrast, post-Christmas. Dichotomy. 

As a young child, I dreaded the morning after Christmas. It was all over! All of that excitement and waiting, and now I would have to wait another year for it. In my thirties, these days - the days after Christmas - is the time where the magic happened, through me or despite me, and the pre-Christmas build up has only built up to something I’ve known all along - that Hope is there year round, that packing away Christmas alone brings me as much joy and pain as putting up Christmas with my kids. Dichotomy. 

And I’m beginning to wonder if the word dichotomy is too clean of a word to use in this context, or to describe much of anything in this life. Life, this seasonal life, is messy and complex, and maybe it’s not dichotomy after all but complimentary. Maybe we need these quiet, sad yet peaceful, “I don’t know what day it is and my body needs a freaking vegetable” days after Christmas as much as we need the preparing and cooking and busy days pre-Christmas. There are still unwrapped gifts under the tree. Gifts that came in the post-Christmas days, waiting for us to go back to the pre-Christmas excitement. Gifts that remind me of the both/and of this season, and all seasons. 

Maybe we need the contrast of the seasons, maybe we need to throw away some of the ornaments as much as we need to cling to some of them, maybe we need the house filled with food and drinks and laughter and gifts and we also need the house being purged and cleaned and packed away and quiet. I want both. I need both. I want to grieve over those ornaments, the ones that remind me of a life I didn’t want as much as I wanted, as much as I want to hang them at the top of the tree next year to remind me of how far I’ve come. 

A reminder that through the messy and busy and exciting pre-Christmas life, I made it to the messy and quiet and lovely post-Christmas life. 

Or maybe I just need to get back into regular routine so I don’t spend my Saturday afternoons writing about the meaning behind packing up Christmas.  ;) 

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