The Twelfth Day of Christmas

On the twelfth day of Christmas,

my true love sent to me

Twelve drummers drumming,

Eleven pipers piping,

Ten lords a-leaping,

Nine ladies dancing,

Eight maids a-milking,

Seven swans a-swimming,

Six geese a-laying,

Five golden rings,

Four calling birds,

Three French hens,

Two turtle doves,

And a partridge in a pear tree!

I hate when Christmas ends. The build up is so exciting. In our house the decorations come out at the beginning of Advent, the tree goes up one to two weeks before the day, we play Christmas music on the stereo and the piano. It's such a warm, wonderful, exciting time of anticipation.

We try to stretch that feeling out over the twelve days of Christmas but it's hard to do. The all Christmas music radio stations return to their normal programming on Boxing Day. The decorations start coming down around town. It seems like we're trying to hang on to something when everyone else has already given up. It's hard to keep the spirit alive.

Today is the last day of Christmas. This weekend the decorations will start to come down in the house and outside. The tree will be stripped of its decorations and tossed to the curb to be mulched. The videos and DVDs of Christmas movies, the CDs of Christmas music will be packed away for another year. I'm telling you, I can get into a real deep blue funk at this time of year.

To compound it, we haven't had snow on the ground since before Christmas. It's been raining on and off for most of the past week. We saw the sun for a few hours the other afternoon. It really sucks! Writing about it makes it even worse. Why did I do this?