The Week After Christmas

I love the week after Christmas!  Christmas day is past, but the season is still lingering and now the days seem to just glide by.  The decorations are still up and being enjoyed, there are a few bites of cheeseball left in the fridge, and the stores have returned to normal.  Just like I think that Thanksgiving is the prelude to Christmas it seems that this week leading up to New Years is the postlude.  Ah, it is a peaceful, easy time.

I have pleasant childhood memories of the time spent after Christmas in Mississippi.  It was a wonderful week of visiting with grandparents and relatives, playing with new toys, and weather permitting it was a time for afternoon walks in pastures and farmlands. It was just an easy, enjoyable week.  On the years that we lived too far away to go to my grandparents we would spend this week just winding down our Christmas season but it was not the same.

As a working mother I hated leaving my children in day care or camp during this week.  There wasn't anything I could do about it, I had a job and there was no getting off at year end.  I always loved the years that Christmas fell around the weekend so they could have a few days at home to enjoy their gifts.  In spite of my dislike of having to do this I think they were not too scarred, or at least they don't let me know that this traumatized them!

Now I try to take this week off, if possible.  Three years ago I was again in Mississippi, this time starting the task of cleaning out my parents house.  My sister was with me for a few days, then James and Erin came for a few days.  It was nice to have them there, and we even made a day trip to my father's home town.  I drove back in a group of Ole Miss fans headed to the Cotton Bowl!  A  year later Carole and I were there again, but it was to be the last trip we made to work on the house.

I've enjoyed having this week off, once again this year.  While I haven't done most of the things on my to-do list, I have done enough.  And I've had time to relax and to just enjoy the end of the Christmas Season. 

I love the long shadows made by a late December afternoon sun!