Monday Already?

If it weren't for the dark days,
we wouldn't know what it is to walk in the light.

--Earl Campbell--
 

Another Monday morning!  Spent much of yesterday nursing the aches and pains that come from all the physical labor required to dismantle Christmas and bring the house back to normal.  What a hectic weekend it was!  Shopping, cooking for two weeks, AND taking down the decorations, but it The house is all back in order....village is packed away and books back in their respective places on the shelf. There is something so bittersweet about this activity each year; the season is just so short.  All the fun, excitement, and planning for the holiday is over...and far too quickly.  Adrenaline, once high, has now hit its yearly low.  I really didn't want to do all this this year, all those decorations.   Actually, I say that every year, but every year the village still goes up in the end. It's just so much work for something that comes and goes before we even realize it is here...but it is one of our family traditions.  Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without the skaters circling the tree or the children looking in the toy store window as the carolers sing nearby. 

The post holiday blues. Come this time of year, and I find myself overwhelmed by a feeling of sadness...and I am not alone. Many people suffer the post holiday blues. Holidays are times when we suspend our ordinary lives and enter into an entirely different universe. And then, quick as a flash they are over, and we once again find ourselves back in reality. The excitement of pre-holiday planning is over and for some strange reason the blues hit and that joyful sense of new beginning that I felt at New Years has gone. The emotional crash I experience is hard to explain. It feels like something is missing and I experience a sense of sadness and emptiness.

And January can be such cruel month. Terrible weather plagues us, and the cold and darkness keeps us indoors. Perhaps if I could take a nice walk in the country woods, I wouldn't feel so letdown, but alas, I am a city-dweller...and the change of seasons has turned the hot, steamy concrete into an icy walkway; getting about can be difficult in the snow months.  Yet, while the month of February is a cold and bitter month, the arrival of Imbolc at the beginning of the month is a promise that Spring will soon arrive, and new life will begin again.

The bud itself is the miracle.  To watch the upthrust of a daffodil,
to see it take form as a flower-to-be, to see the bud grow and take
on the warmth of color--there is the very synthesis of spring.
--Anonymous--