The post-Christmas winter blues?

When I was very young, the days immediately after Christmas — heck, the hours after Christmas morning! — were sad and depressing to me.  From roughly Thanksgiving Day through Christmas Eve I was so excited about, and so focused on, the coming of Christmas that it was a real let-down once the anticipation was over.  I didn’t even like to listen to Christmas music any more.

And now, having moved from southern California to Utah, I have to face the rest of winter.  It reminds me almost of C. S. Lewis’s description of Narnia under the dominion of the White Witch in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe:  It was always winter, he writes, but never Christmas.  Although, to me as a child, winter and Christmas involved blue skies and palm trees, just as in the original New Testament story, I’ve been acculturated to the Currier & Ives vision of Christmas as possibly involving lots of fresh snow dotted by the occasional sleigh and a rural New England church or two.  But after Christmas?  I don’t much mind the cold, but I really dislike gray skies, old and dirty snow, and dead trees.

In maturity, though, my attitude has changed considerably from what it once was.  Christmas Day itself, alas, isn’t quite so magical as it was when I was a (greedy) child.  But my appreciation of what Christmas actually stands for is many times deeper.  And, to the extent that I permit it to do so, that meaning informs my life throughout the year.

Elder Neal A. Maxwell captured this sentiment beautifully:

The larger Christmas story is clearly not over. It is not solely about some other time, some other place, and some other people. It is still unfolding, and we are in it!” (The Christmas Scene, page 11)