The New Year: Letting Go and Looking Forward, Not Back

I am asking myself if it’s time to take down the Christmas tree. The answer to this question used to be set in stone: on New Year’s Day, it came down. But gradually over the years, especially after the kids grew up and lost interest in the tree, I stopped adhering to the hard and fast rule. Sometimes, if it feels right, I take it down before The New Year. When I got up yesterday morning, I began to feel as if it is about time to put it away.
Of course, I always resist taking it down. Night after night, I like to sit in the livingroom with just the light from the tree and the glitter from the ornaments lighting the dark. Face it, you only get a limited number of nights per year to bask in Christmas magic.
And, every year, as I begin to think about boxing up all the shiny eggs and balls and bells that look as if Faberge colored them and jeweled them and iced them with glitter, I ask myself how it would look to put them on a fake Ficus and leave them up all year round. If I did that, I could also keep my tiny skaters and shoppers, bears and llamas, felt birds and reindeer right where I could see them! Oh, joy! Maybe.
That train of thought always brings me inevitably to one conclusion: you can’t imitate a Christmas tree. Sadly but truly, the magic of the season yields to the new broom that sweeps everything clean on New Year’s Day. As much as I love Christmas, seeing my neighbor’s wreath on the door in late August (yes, he never takes it down) does not fill me with Christmas excitement. It makes me sad, as if I’ve arrived at a party where everyone else has already gone home.
Over the last couple of days, as I have mulled over the task of putting each precious ornament away for another year and boxing up my beloved fake pre-lit pine (don’t gasp in horror, I can’t put up a real five foot tree by myself because it is as big as I am but I can whip this one out of the box in five minutes flat unaccompanied!) I am thinking about the coming year. I often look back at this time, but I have discovered looking back only brings a profound sense of loss. Like the wreath on the door in summer, looking back at the New Year makes me sad.
The point of changing that digit in the date is fresh opportunity. New and wonderful things have been ahead every year but looking back has kept me from anticipating them with joy. I see the point in the Biblical story about Lot’s wife who turned to salt when God told her not to look back as they fled Sodom.
So, I am going to take my tree down with joy and put up my sparkling, fantastical New Year’s decorations with joy, and I am going to embrace the New Year and change and be happy! And I wish everyone of you a happy and prosperous 2013, and thank you for being my readers!

Happy New Year