Sadness follows the Christmas season

"I'm sad. Christmas is almost over." So said my 2-year-old grandson in the middle of the afternoon on Dec. 25.

His parents and grandparents attempted to comfort him by telling him that Christmas was not over. Christmas lasts until Jan. 6. I don't think we did a lot to alleviate his sadness. So it goes with small children, whose excitement for Christmas builds over a period of a couple of months or longer, and then it's over.

Last night, having removed the decorations and the lights from our tree, which was shedding needles like a cumulus cloud sheds moisture, and helping me wrangle the tree out the door, my wife sat looking at the empty spot the tree had occupied. "I'm sad," she said. The tree had been up nearly a month. And although we were leaving up other decorations — Epiphany has not yet arrived — it was sad to see the empty spot in the sun room and to lose the twinkling lights that had brightened that dark corner.

Much of our Christmas traditions, including bringing green trees indoors and installing candles and lights throughout the house, have more to do with the winter solstice — the lengthening of darkness as days grow shorter — than with Christian history or theology. Now that Christmas is (almost) past, we have little to encourage us through the still-long nights and the dreary, gray landscape until the first buds of spring arrive.

Two-year-olds can be pretty perceptive. It's a sad time.