Bah Humbug


December 26 is a downer for many people.

The decorations are still up, but do you sometimes feel whats the point?

Christmas is over.

The children have done their thing with the presents which probably are unbroken and mostly appreciated, but their allure as surprises in brightly wrapped packages is gone.  The guilt-free indulgences that happened in the last several weeks leading up to Christmas with chocolates and Chex mix is now giving way to nagging worries about love handles.

Call it the post-Christmas letdown, the result of spending a month immersed in the holiday, then having it end abruptly.  Although the holiday season doesn't end until New Year's Day, Christmas is the big holiday, the pinnacle of the season, the focus of planning and preparation.  The hours of decorating, cooking, and preparing for the big holiday gathering are shattered in the few short minutes of opening gifts, eating a great meal and if you are lucky . . . family or friends spending a few hours with you after the festivities.

Because Christmas is so important, feeling the letdown is common.  But getting over it can be tricky.  That reality comes crashing in the morning of Dec. 26.  There's something anticlimactic about a Christmas tree with no presents under it, about leftovers from a big holiday meal, about stacks of Christmas CDs that somehow don't sound as good as they did Dec. 24.

And for many people . . . there are the bills.

I always feel let down to some degree right after Christmas, whether or not I had a good holiday.  If I had a good Christmas, I want the feelings to go on, but if my Christmas sucked, I feel down because there's no hope left for recovering the holiday for that year and it's another long year before I get another chance.  I feel bad to see the colorful lights being taken down and neighborhoods being returned to their former drab darkness.  One of the nice things about Anchorage is the lights tend to be left on until March when the Iditarod Sled Dog race finishes and the last musher crosses safely under the burled archway in Nome.  It gives us a much needed mood lift during the long hours of darkness seeing the trees and buildings lit up in the various colors and themes.

Keeping busy after the holidays is another way to lose those holiday blues as well as taking some time out for yourself.  You have been busy doing for everyone else it is now time to take a mini-break to decompress and smile.

I hope everyone had a great day yesterday and that the time spent with family and friends will continue that feeling long into the new year.

Enjoy the rest of the holidays and laugh out loud so the smiles will set the mood.

Ice

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