Why does Christmas get "old" so fast?

I can’t believe that Christmas was just two days ago and already people are hanging it up for another year. My thought is that at this time of the year we should just be getting started. We have the whole New Year to kick off yet. Why should anybody be done celebrating? Do they really feel that Christmas is one day, when it is a whole season? Or do they think that the season of Christmas is that entire month of frantically searching for the right gifts and once the gifts are opened the season is over?

When I asked people how their Christmas was a quite a few answered with, “I’m glad it’s over.” And they weren’t being “bah-humbug” about it. They just wanted to get on with the rest of their lives.

To be honest, it is easy for me to feel that way too. But when I think about it, it takes me too long to decorate the house and put up the tree for me to feel that any of this is over. I could easily sing Christmas carols all year long. And did I sew that poinsettia skirt to wear one day of the year? Why does this guy get to dress like this all the time and I can’t?

Probably for the same reason that I can't eat cookies all the time either.

I hope you had a wonderful day, whether you are done with it or not.

A not-drive-by Santa

This will no doubt be the Christmas story which causes my daughter to disown me for all time. But some Christmas stories are too good to remain within the realm of the family unit; some need to fly and be free.

Val was still in high school and driving her own car to school. It was the last day of school before Christmas break and there had been snow the night before. As she was rounding a sharp corner a few miles from our house, her car slid into the ditch. Two men in a four-wheel drive pickup drove up as she was making calls from her cell phone.

“Can we pull you out?” they offered. She was much obliged. As one of them was getting a chain from the back of his truck, another vehicle pulled up.

“What happened here?” It was a round man in a full white beard and wearing a red hat trimmed in white fur.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Val was not happy about being late for school and not happy with this jolly old elf.

The two strangers pulled her car out of the brush on the side of the road and the man in the red hat handed them a twenty. “Thank you so much. Buy yourselves some beer with the money.”

I don’t know what these two young men thought, but they took the bill, nodded their thanks and drove off. Val continued scowling. It took her a year or two to see the humor in the whole situation. What kind of Santa gives somebody money for beer? In her mind it would have been so much easier if her step-dad, on his way home from playing Santa, would have just kept driving.