![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/42\/2011\/01\/christmas-tree1-225x300.jpg\")
<\/a>\u201cIt\u2019s Time to Take the Tree Down\u201d<\/p>\nI still haven\u2019t taken my tree down. It\u2019s past the middle of January and it is still standing \u00a0sentinel in<\/p>\n
the corner of the living room. I have good reasons. We live in Allen, Texas but are originally from Pennsylvania. We left Christmas for a 5 day trip \u201cback east\u201d to see family and friends.\u00a0 So I couldn\u2019t take it down then. We got home and I had to get ready for an intensive two week course I was co-teaching the first two weeks of January.\u00a0 So I\u00a0 didn\u2019t find time to take it down then.\u00a0 Now it\u2019s mid January and I have several workshops and meetings to prepare for that take me up through the first week of February. So I don\u2019t have time to take it down now.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s fake so I can\u2019t leave it at the curb. Besides, that pick up day is long gone. I know what I need to do. I need to spend a couple of hours painstakingly removing the ornaments, one by one, and put them in their respective boxes. I need to unwind the lights and wrap them around the coffee can, take out the fake branches one by one and bind each bundle with duct tape and put them in the fake tree box. Then I need to muscle it out to the garage, vacumn up the fake pine needles, and schlep all the ornament boxes to the attic. I also have to unwind the fake garland from the stairway railing and put away the cr\u00e8che. Joseph is missing, for some reason, so at least I don\u2019t have to put him away.\u00a0 There is, to my knowledge, no ritual, at least in the United Methodist Book of Worship, to mark this occasion.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s depressing to have let something go on too long. A relationship that needs to end. A bad habit. An addiction. Maybe a role we need to stop filling. I\u2019m not sure what it would be for everyone else. I only know what it needs to be for me this year.<\/p>\n
Sometimes I go to professional meetings. They usually last 3 or 4 days. You wear a lanyard with your name tag around your neck that has a dot on it indicating whether you\u2019re having beef, fish or chicken at the closing banquet. You walk around the halls of the conference center\/hotel cheerily greeting colleagues and earnestly participating in small group discussions, \u00a0and then it is time to go home. \u00a0I have quite a collection of lanyards. Maybe I\u2019ll make some yardart with them someday when I retire. But what if I stuck around the hotel after everyone else went home, just walking around, lanyard and all, wondering where everybody else had gone, just walking around until the next meeting in 12 months?<\/p>\n
When the meeting is over, you go home and unpack and do your laundry and get back to work.\u00a0 And when the twelve days of Christmas are over, you take down your tree.<\/p>\n
I wish I could say that this procrastination is a new problem for me. \u00a0But it has plagued me for years. December and January are busy months in the teaching profession. I have trouble finding time to put the tree up and even more trouble finding time to take it down.<\/p>\n
Sometimes we need someone to tell us it\u2019s time. One year, when I lived in Pennsylvania, a neighbor down the street stopped, parked her car in front of my house, rang the bell, and, when I came to the door, told me it was March and that I needed to take the Christmas wreath down from my front door. I didn\u2019t even know her that well. That\u2019s probably why she took the liberty.\u00a0 Kings and rulers, in the Bible and today, have needed \u00a0prophets to tell them it is time to put oppressive practices away. We Christians need Epiphany with its message that, with the arrival of Jesus the light of the world, it\u2019s time to put certain things under the bushel, or at least, in the attic, so our light can shine to make the world more joyful and just. \u00a0If you\u2019ll excuse me, there is something I need to do now.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I know what I need to do. I need to take down each ornament, one by one, and put them in their respective boxes, unwind the lights and wrap
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