Those Twinkling Lights

In the 1966 movie The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t, Paul Tripp asks the musical question “Why Can’t Everyday by Christmas?”

I never saw the movie and I wasn’t impressed with the song the one time I heard it, but I’m thinking about it now as I am still seeing Christmas lights more than a month after the holiday.

Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen lights up on homes and businesses for this long.

Of course, the numbers have definitely dwindled over the last 30-odd days, but there are still several good-sized displays out there.

And it’s not just my neighborhood. I saw some huge wreaths outside a bar on E28th Street in Manhattan on Friday night, and both my brother in New Jersey and my cousin in Arizona told me they’re seeing similar situations.

Even the weather is getting in on the act, dumping a ton of snow on the East Coast and giving us a White Christmas four weeks after the fact.

When I was growing up, we took down the Christmas tree and other decorations on January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany, aka Little Christmas, or Three Kings Day, which marks the day the Three Wisemen arrived in Bethlehem.

“Christmas isn’t just a day,” my father used to tell us. “It’s a season.”

Indeed, it is. And I still get angry at those ying-yangs who yank down their trees at the stroke of midnight on December 26 and throw them in the trash.

But now it seems we’ve gone from The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t to The Christmas That Won’t Stop. I hate to get all Ebenezer here, people, but I think it’s time to let Christmas 2021 go.

Please understand that I absolutely love Christmas decorations. The lights, the window displays, the beautiful trees, still fill me with a child-like wonder that I hope I never lose.

Hear The Calendars Sing

I’m wondering if people are just so depressed nowadays that they don’t want to let go of the holiday cheer.

Lights have always been a symbol of hope and they are so important during the dark days of winter.

After more than two years of Covid-19 and its chorus line of vicious variants, we sure do need a little Christmas right this very minute.

When you take down the lights and decorations, you’re getting back to the ugly reality of war, famine, disease and the most hideous political climate I have ever witnessed.

But one of the main reasons that the lights still hold their magic is because that we see them so rarely—as in once a year. If every day is Christmas, then Christmas would lose its meaning.

I love Christmas carols, too, but I don’t go around whistling “Baby, It's Cold Outside” in the middle of August.

The Bible says that for everything there is a season, a time to mourn and a time to dance.

Taking down Christmas decorations can be a sad experience, but we can also look forward to a new year and the return of spring.

One of my favorite lines from A Christmas Carol comes from Ghost of Christmas Present, who tells Scrooge “we Spirits of Christmas do not live only one day of our year, we live the whole three-hundred and sixty-five.”

“So is it true of the Child born in Bethlehem,” the Ghost says. “He does not live in men's hearts one day of the year, but in all days of the year.”

The lights can come down, but they don’t have to go out.