My Annual Post-Christmas Delemma

Well, Christmas is over and like every year before, I face my usual January dilemma -- when MUST I take down my Christmas decorations?

Most of my neighbors had every sign of Christmas removed by the evening of the 26th!  If it weren't  for the trees lying out by the curb, one might never know that just the day before planes were having trouble finding Charlotte airport because of all the lights shining up from my neighborhood here in Salisbury!

WHAT IS THE RUSH???? 

I've been told that the holidays are so hectic, people are just ready to get things back to normal.

What??  The shopping is over, the gift-giving, the parties, the dinners...the hectic part of Christmas is over!  Now is the time we can truly enjoy the peace and the quiet and the serenity of sitting in the soft glow of Christmas lights and candles and shiny Christmas balls!

My house never feels so warm and peaceful and inviting as it does when it is aglow with the lights of Christmas. Gives me a feeling of good will toward all men. 

I'm just never excited to pack that away.

Hope in the New Year!

I actually wrote this last January, but never posted it.  I don't know why. I had forgotten it was here, until I found it today, still waiting.  It makes me a little sad to read it, but then I was sad last January.  We had lost an important member of our family and so it was difficult to imagine how we could march full of hope into a new year.

Nevertheless, the words are just as true for me this January, as last. I always face a new year with a little apprehension.  The up-side to that is it's never without hope.

So, here's last years words for this year...

Well here we are, the first day of a new year!  As usual, I enter the new year with mixed feelings - excitement, hope, apprehension, and yes, fear. I guess this is probably true for many of us, but especially for those of us having a little age on us.  Unlike the young, we older folks no longer feel invincible and we've learned from experience that things don't always work out.

So I enter the new year, excited for the opportunity of a new beginning, hopeful that this year will be better than the last, apprehensive because I know the possibilities include both good and bad, and fearful of the bad.

I guess of all these feelings though, I'm the most hopeful!  I am hopeful that this new year will bring jobs to those in need of work, food for those who go to bed hungry every night, love for those who yearn for it but don't have it, healing to those who face devastating illness, peace to those whose minds harbor demons they have to fight every day of their lives, and hope to those who feel they are without hope.

Yes, mostly I'm hopeful.