Decorations could brighten winter

At long last, things are a little less festive at our house.
The outdoor Christmas decorations finally came down over the weekend.
It’s not as if the Christmas spirit doesn’t live all year long at our house.
It does.
But this winter has made it a little tough to make the post-holiday change that usually comes soon after New Year’s Day.
Just the same, with spring on the horizon, March just days away and baseball players reporting to their teams, it seemed as if the time had come to get the lights off the shrubbery.
Even then, it was no easy chore.
Our house faces north, and as any north-facing homeowner will tell you, the snow lingers longer around the front door.
In our case, that meant more than eight inches of crusty, ugly, not-very-clean snow to stomp through in order to get the job done.
Even though we’ve only had flurries of late, snow still stretches from our front door all the way to the sidewalk.
But now, the lights are down. The zillion-foot-long extension cord has been coiled back up and put in the garage. The lighted garlands that framed the front door — but which burned out a week before Christmas — have been removed. Red bows have been detached from bits of greenery.
And now — just when February is at its ugliest — all decorations have been eliminated.
It got me to thinking, after the fact.
Maybe instead of putting up decorations during the holiday season, when everyone’s spirits are already high, Christmas joy is spreading and the new year is a blank slate before us, maybe we should wait and put the lights and bows and garlands up in February.
Now — when winter seems to have been eternal and the crocuses haven’t yet appeared — is the time our spirits need brightening. They’re bright enough in December.
So why not hold off at Christmastime, then — about the time the first polar vortex descends upon the Midwest — light up the neighborhood? That’s when we could use a boost. That’s when spirits are sagging.
Or maybe next year, if we have the same sort of snowy, brutally cold winter, we could just leave the decorations up permanently after the holidays.
Then again, I’d have to be careful not to cut the extension cord with the lawnmower.[[In-content Ad]]