Christmas-ish

With the end of Christmas Day usually comes this feeling of eugh, no!, and eh. It's a feeling of general un-Christmas-ness. And it's sad.

But it's no one's fault but my own (or your own, if you happen to have this same problem. Sorry, but it's a problem that needs to be recognized).

What is it about the day after Christmas that makes me (us) feel this way? It's not like the decorations go down as soon as it strikes midnight after the 25th (they don't). It's not like I can't pull up Pandora and still listen to Christmas music (I can). It's not like the Savior was born one day and now has nothing to do with my life (yeah, that's just not even close to true).

So what is it?

I think that some of it (at least for me) is that I have this sense of multiple times of life. There's summertime, then there's normal time. There's Christmastime, and then there's normal time. That separation--even though it's only mental--creates a divide between my feelings and actions (and dare I say, the feelings and actions of others) that is very real.

So today, on December the twenty-eighth, a whopping three days after Christmas, I did something very Christmasy: I went to see the lights and nativity display at the Mesa, Arizona temple.

Granted, the feeling was a little different. The blinding LEDs weren't accented with the usual before-Christmas anticipation and spirit. But. In combining the "Christmas" and the "normal," I felt a distinct feeling of peace and a desire to begin anew.

So maybe there are different times of life--but none should be settling, none should be "normal." The time of Christmas is perhaps the time of reflection; so now it's time to move on to the time of action. (That's what New Year's resolutions are about, right?) And that's fine...as long as we let the spirit of Christmas linger as we move from time to time.