NO TREE POLICE

It's January 5, 2010. Do you know where your Christmas decorations are? Neatly packed away or still shining brightly? I used to always hurry to put the Christmas decorations away right after New Year's Day. Maybe it was because we always had a real Christmas tree and I felt it was a fire hazard to leave it around, with its constantly falling needles; or was it perhaps because the media resoundedly ended the Christmas season on January first with commercials about tropical vacations and the upcoming Valentine's Day? Or maybe it was just another task on my "to-do" list. I'm not quite sure. However, since we have purchased a fake tree (much to the chagrin of my children), I have decided to leave up my Christmas decorations until some unspecified date in January. There are, after all, no tree police issuing citations for having Christmas decorations up until sometime in January. This decision has given me an unbelievable feeling of freedom. I can continue to enjoy the warm Christmas feelings that can be so often pushed away with the stark and cold January realities of life. Do we really want to banish that Christmas spirit for another eleven months? Do we desire our lives to somehow get back to normal? Hopefully normal is always Christmas. Always a time for gathering with family and friends. Always a time for singing,"Alleluias." Always a time for giving and receiving. We haven't even lived through the twelve days of Christmas.What about the lords, pipers, and drummers? Don't we owe them at least some type of audience response? Though we have had over two thousand years to ponder the mystery and majesty of Jesus' birth, I still think that we don't quite get it or we would keep that Nativity out year round. GOD OF THE UNIVERSE TOOK OFF HIS ROBE OF GLORY AND BECAME A HUMAN BABY TO SET US FREE FROM SIN AND DEATH. WOW, will I ever truly understand the implications of this event in the history of mankind or my own history? I doubt it, so keep those decorations up and keep singing, "Gloria in Excelsis Deo." The picture at the top of this post is a little Nativity that I keep up year round on my book self.