Epiphanies.

When do you take your Christmas lights down?

"When we move" doesn't seem to be the kind of answer I'm looking for, tempting as it is.

For us, it's after the 6th of January, the traditional date for the Epiphany, also known as Three Kings Day, the day the Magi arrived to pay homage to the newborn king. In the U.S. Epiphany is celebrated on the first Sunday after New Year's, but it's still a day of obligation in the British Isles.

Since New Year's Day the Christmas light attrition on the block has been building, and we're feeling like the last house left. But we soldier on one more day. Then the outside stuff comes right down. Then the inside stuff gets stashed away. Then the cellar, the cellar that I planned to straighten up since the Christmas stuff was taken out of it, ends up looking at least as bad as it did on Halloween.

Soldier on we do, with one last glance back at the holidays and at the previous year.

I am glad to see 2015 go. I've never seen such a grim collection of things pretending to be the opposite of what they are. The hoverboard that doesn't actually hover is just one. The woman who is a man is another. The people who "&^@*##$ love science" who couldn't balance a checkbook are yet another. And there's the college students who raise hell over tiny little microaggressions, while macroaggressions are destroying the oldest Christian communities in the world and putting women and children in a living hell. Then there's the crony capitalist populist, the feminist candidate who destroys women to protect her hubby, the president who negotiates nuclear deals with thugs dedicated to our destruction, the war victories handed over to the enemies of our nation, the entertainment that fails to entertain --- obviously I could go on. I wish the hoverboard was the extent of it.

So I guess I wrote a 2015-in-review blurt after all. Apologies.

Anyhoo, it's almost over. The surly teens are back waiting for the bus outside; what rough beasts, their hour come round at last, slouch toward high school to be bored?

The decorations will soon be gone. The last vestige of Christmas. It's been cold, but we have not had a lick of snow, so soon there will be no sign at all that we even had Christmas around here. Nothing but a few extra pounds, a few delightful memories, and this soap, in one of the bathrooms.

And since we're CDC-compliant around here, it too will be gone soon.