Christmas finally came to an official end with taking down the outdoor lights over the weekend.
Bryant, Virginia
It’s always a bittersweet time of the year. After weeks of holiday feels, starting back with Thanksgiving, it finally ends in early to mid January. This year we decided to keep the outdoor lights up until just after my wife’s (Yvette) birthday on January 12th.
Yvette (for upper left) gathered around a makeshift table in our barn during her birthday on January 12th with friends and friends she crosses paths with in the real estate business often.
What’s called the Winter Maple Brook Farm Hogstar Classic signals the end of holiday season. Yvette (sitting) listens intently as our dear neighbor, Rob, holds court! To Yvette’s left is her friend and managing broker, Chas Morgan.
There’s even the celebratory burning of the Christmas tree. We almost always cut the tree from right here on the farm in the Virginia Blue Ridge.
We generally get in the holiday mode in the few days leading up to Thanksgiving. By then pigs on the farm have been processed, the garden is long since done, and it’s more of a laid back time as the long winter stretch settles in for weeks ahead. The end of holiday mode is always signified by Yvette’s birthday.
This past Sunday the last of the decorations came down and got packed away. Almost another year will pass before it’s time to get them back up again.
While it’s sort of melancholy for the lights to come down (my memories go back to all of those innocent childhood Christmases on the farm in NW Tennessee) I do like having it in the rearview. One of the main reasons, summer. I deplore winter. And while I will miss the festive carefree atmosphere of the holidays, I also look very forward to those lightening bugs, long summer days, thunder in the distance, days on the tractor in the fields, dips in the cool creeks here on the farm, and so much more that summer brings.
Until next Christmas …lights out.
TommyStafford.com 