Begone!

How fast would all the Christmas stuff be gone if it weren't for New Year's following hot on its heels?

It seems to be a pretty American approach to holidays. It makes sense, really, for most of them. There's a day off (usually Monday) and it's back to work, on toward the next break in the routine.

And it's true too for Easter, a more important yet less culturally celebrated holiday. People seldom travel very far to be with family on Easter; you go to see local relatives, maybe, but no one stays over, and it's back to work Monday. In the church calendar Easter lasts eight days, and Eastertide for fifty, but in the American cultural calendar, just one.

We see it with Halloween, a non-holiday holiday that has a lot of cultural appeal, and yet on November 1 all those pumpkins and witches look like a mild hangover. What was that all about?

Christmas would be little more than these except for a few cultural shifts that put a heft on to that holiday that none of the others have:

1) Tradition of gifts. The stronger the gift-giving tradition is tied to a holiday, the stronger the advertising blitz will be ahead of the holiday. That also extends to other shopping, as for candy or festive food. I'd rank them from top down as: Christmas, St. Valentine's Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Easter, and everything else. New Year's Eve is too jumbled with Christmas to separate; the booze ads can be for both.

2) Using up vacation time. Its spot at the end of the year makes Christmas perfect for people whose vacation policy is use-it-or-lose-it.

3) Popularity of religious and secular songs. No other holiday can compare musically. Classically speaking, Easter probably has the finest music, but not the most popular, and that goes for Christmas hymns as well as carols and songs and even parodies.

4) Sentiment of family gathering around, celebrated in story and song. Only Thanksgiving shares the celebration of getting the family together this way, and it doesn't have nearly as many stories and songs about it, and hardly any Hallmark movies.

5) The strong desire for a break. Up in the northern hemisphere, winter has begun, the days are short, the end of year accounting is due, and everyone wants a break from the routine. Spring and the beginning of summer may be the only rivals for the urge to get away from the everyday, but they have more to do with the positive change of seasons than burnout.

Christmas is tops on all five. And yet, on December 26, America starts to shovel things away, like we're a little ashamed of ourselves. Lights go off. People go back to their lives in slow, uneven stages. The supermarket stops playing Christmas music, even New Year's or snow-themed stuff, and goes back to Human League and Barenaked Ladies. New Year's merchandise appears in the seasonal shelf, but it's always trying too hard, like Christmas's copycat kid brother. "I'm fun, too!"

And on January 2, even though we're only at Nine Ladies Dancing, the decorations start to fall like autumn leaves in a gust.

I feel the same way, believe me, even though I know Christmas is supposed to be the start of the celebration, not the end. I leave the decorations up through Epiphany, but my heart is flagging. I want to get on with things. I'm grateful that the season doesn't go all the way to Candlemas anymore.

And yet, when it is all over, and the decorations are gone, and in this place we're left with two to three months more of blank winter, it's sometimes hard to look at the space while feeling the hole from things of comfort and joy.

I just love this stuff.

Oh, well. On to New Year's, on to 2020, on to Epiphany, on to the rest of the winter, come what may. God bless us, everyone.