Forgive me a moment of post-holiday wistfulness as I stare into the glare of our sunny, dry January.
Has anyone come up with a word for this “it’s all over” feeling I experience as the page turns on New Year’s Day? It’s not quite sadness. It’s not quite regret. It’s not quite a pining for the holidays, with all their promise and hope, both material and immaterial, to continue. Yet it’s somehow all of these, hardened by the knowledge “Well, that’s that. We won’t be back here again.”
The lights are still hanging on our house and will for a week or two longer (we have to leave them up at the very least so our nephew Max can see them, right?). They’ll come down, though, and I’ll have a pang. Not for the lights themselves, but maybe for what they might represent: a wish to project something joyous and hopeful (and cool) to all our neighbors and all the passers-by. I have one neighbor, up the street and around the corner for us, who seems to deal with the post-holiday mourning period by maintaining one light display after another throughout the whole year. At the very least, he’ll give us Valentine’s, Easter, Fourth of July, Halloween, and Thanksgiving light displays.
Resolution, for the season to come: Find some other small way to project that holiday light to others. And now back to January.
as i stare down the last hour of our extended holiday and watch the lights, lights no longer shining in anticipation of a celebration to come, no longer carrying a promise of something anticipated but still surprising in the deepest shadows of our short days, lights shining out now maybe with a little insistence that the season isn’t, should not be over, lights maybe a little bittersweet because they may shine in place of other hopes and disappointments of the season adn the longer year juste passed.
