Dakota Beacon

Somewhere it has been said that a person will identify with the Four Stages of Christmas between childhood and adulthood:

I believed in Santa Claus.

I believed my parents were Santa Claus.

I realized there was no Santa Claus.

Now I am Santa Claus.

As a child, the days before Christmas were always charged with anticipation. I wanted Christmas to go on forever, to never end. Excitement built with each passing day and I wanted to preserve the endless feeling of anticipation leading to Christmas Eve. Christmas Day inevitably dawned with a flurry of activity.

It finally occurred to me sometime around age fifteen that the magic of the season was wrapped up in anticipation and expectancy. It was then that I realized that the absence of expectation produced The Big Letdown.

Christmas seemed to come and go so quickly. Almost as an afterthought, New Year’s Eve slid in behind Christmas. Up with the new calendar, down with the old. New Year’s Day became anticlimactic with only bittersweet memories added to other memories in my collection.

In our home, New Year’s Day marked the culmination of the Christmas season. I’ve always found this to be a rather solemn occasion, even more so in later years. After New Year’s it’s back to the humdrum and a return to the daily routine after coming down from the holiday high.

New Year’s Day marks the march of time like no other holiday. As youngsters we were not so much aware of it. A cartoon once depicted kids in conversation saying something like, “It’s January 1st and I don’t feel any different.” A few years later we kids were singing a different tune.

By mid-life it dawned on me that there were more Christmases behind me than there were ahead of me. Although it sounds a bit schmaltzy, a little sadness accompanies the holiday afterglow. It is true. To offer a trite observation, we won’t come this way again.

Breaking down the Christmas decorations, I came across an ornament given by a friend years ago. Repacking the decorations one at a time symbolized different years in the progress of Christmases past. Handmade ornamented Christmas stockings given by my sister decades ago, candle sticks, a crèche, a music box -- each marked a different Christmas season and each held their own special memory.

Memories cascaded around me tweaking a recollection here, jogging reminiscence there. My rational nature gave way soon enough and emotions kicked in. They do serve a role when attitudes soften, time weighs more precious, good health holds value, friends and family grow more intimate, and children become more cherished. The temporary things that seemed so important yesterday pale in comparison to these realizations.

“Cleaning up” after New Year’s seems like an inappropriate phrase. It implies the season was a mess which, of course, it was not. Our celebration resembled a prolonged displacement of the usual home décor. Now comes the reassembling of the household.

Stowing the Christmas remnants resembles a minor act of desecration in that it disturbed the sanctity of the Christmas tradition. In truth, the breakdown of the decorations itself becomes a certain tradition with somber overtones.

The coming year will culminate once again with Christmas adornments. It seems an eternity from the near end of that timeline but, in keeping with cycles, we will reassemble the decorations in less than a year and Christmas anticipation will build once more.

For better or for worse, so much will happen between now and then. Some events will be permanent, some not so much, and the things made permanent, unfortunately, will be conclusive: births and deaths, health and illness, good and evil.

At the risk of casting shadows, for each of us our holidays are numbered. Before the age of fifty the thought never entered my mind. After fifty, the idea nags in the recesses of my thoughts.

All that said, New Year’s Day presents something of an oxymoron. Of all the holidays that bookmark the passage of time, New Year’s Day is a passionate, heartfelt, and moving time, not for the anticipation it brings, but for the opportunity to shed the trials and tribulations of the past year. As poet Alexander Pope observed, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast; Man never is, but always to be blest.”

The promise remains that we can choose to start anew.

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at P. O. Box 337, Stanley, ND 58784 or (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).