A Post Christmas Conundrum

So Christmas, after all the build up, has come and gone. Presents have been opened and the mountain of recycling, from all the packaging and wrapping paper is clogging up wherever you leave your recycling.

Now Christmas is forgotten for another year (well, until September) and we look to the new year for new starts and new beginnings and it all starts again.

I am now grumpily looking at all the Christmas decorations and thinking, shit, it will take ages to take all this down. It will be all dusty and horrible and there will be sneezing, and I will marvel at how vast our living room is without all the crap that is associated with Christmas.

Now don't get me wrong, as I write this, I realise that I may be coming across a tad Grinchy. Which I am not. I love Christmas. The trouble is our decorations went up the first weekend of December (due to obligations we had on the other two weekends leading up to Christmas) so the decorations have been up for AGES.

I get all caught up in the excitement of it all, I watch certain films to get me in the mood (Love Actually and The Holidays), I build Lego Santa's and Christmas scenes, and they get 'distributed' at home and at work. My children, get caught up in my excitement - they write their letters to Santa and get their PNP message. They get a new Christmas tree decoration each year, or make something. They help me cook Christmassy fayre.

The point is, after all this, it can be a tiny little bit disappointing. I don't know what exactly I am expecting. A bit of real Christmas magic, a personal letter from Santa, a surprise stocking of my own. I have no idea, I get beautiful thoughtful gifts from my family and friends, I see the joy on my children's faces as they open their presents and their stockings, totally believing in all that is Christmas, and I marvel yearly that I manage to maintain this for them, surely that is the magic?

Is it just that I have finally grown up and see the commercialism and the ridiculous amount of money we spend? Beautifully wrapped presents, minutes later all that beautiful wrapping ripped, torn and thrown away.
Anyone who knows me, will know how sad it makes me a) to realise I am growing up, about anything! and b) to think anything beautiful is wasteful.

So a conundrum, maybe I am just on a post Christmas low, or am I growing up. Either way I have only two words.

Bah humbug!