That’s it. The tree is down, the cards removed, the festive flowers have finally faded… apart from a token branch of pine and a poinsettia that are still hanging in there, determined to make it to Twelfth Night and the end of Christmastide.
Normality, such as it is around here, is restored to my home for another three hundred and thirty-odd days Normality hadn’t really gone anywhere… it just pranced around wearing tinsel for a while, assuming a disguise of frivolity, while underneath the mask it continued its inexorable gnawing at the skirting-board of time.
The supermarket shelves still sport their Christmas goods, though now they are attended by ‘clearance’ signs while Easter Bunnies and chocolate eggs take pride of place already. This too is normal… the Twelve Days of Christmas mean nothing to the giants of retail who worship the Profit of the great god Mammon.
WordPress has done what it always does, sneaking in changes behind my back and casually removing all the email notifications from the blogs I follow yet again. Normality, it seems, has been doing just fine without me.
The sun has risen every day and set every night. I may not have seen it happen, as the glory hid itself behind the banks of fog or was veiled by conversation and friendship, but the days have still quietly ticked themselves off the calendar, regardless of my lack of attention. People have been born, lived and died just as they do every other day of the year. There have been as many tears and as much laughter as there always is.
It makes me remember just how small we are in the grand scheme of things, how transient our passage, how insignificant our personal problems, hopes, fears and dreams may be against the great backdrop of eternity. Yet every single one of us is part of the wonder that makes up the rich tapestry of the world and the normality we know. Not one could be subtracted without changing everything. ‘Back to normal’ may sound like a grey, dull state of being, but in reality, it takes very little to see its complex beauty, feel the stately rhythm of the passing days and live in a state of wonder.
Sue Vincent's Daily Echo 
I left my nativity scene up …just to leave it up. Everything else came down
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And why not? 🙂
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Personally, I’m glad for a little normality! Lovely as it it to sleep in a little, stay up late, eat erratically, etc. I don’t cope well without my routines for too long!!!
Yay for normal!
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As my alarm was only turned off for one day, that side of things didn’t really kick in. Nick still wants his breakfast 😉
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So do kids… but luckily they like their sleep so usually I am dragging them out of bed. It was lovely to have those lie ins though… waking when it was light VS. What feels like the middle of the night at the moment!
And also feeling a cold coming
Didn’t help that the school felt like an Ice box yesterday! ❄
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Yuck… you shouldn’t have to freeze at work x
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It was so cold I couldn’t take my coat off for 45 minutes…. then when i did, I wished I could put it back on again… no fun going out in this weather with the lil ones either!
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No, I can imagine…and it is damp with it too 😦
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About 2 degrees warmer today… I’m layered and well prepared today!!!
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Mild but still chilly here with the all-pervading damp 😦
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Let’s see what tomorrow holds now!!! Just warming by the radiator at home now!
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Mine have just come on… and I feel a hot bath coming on to thaw after Ani’s late walk 😉
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Sounds like a plan!!!
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and a necessity 😉
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Beautiful. How does Word Press do this without permission? please post this at the Senior Salon if you get a moment.
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They do it quite regularly unfortunately.
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The tree will hang around until my son has time to move it to the attic. I’m so glad it’s small. I’m glad the holidays are over, but not looking forward to what I suspect will be a grim year to come. Oh well. It will be what it will be. My job is to survive it and where possible, make it better.
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It will be what it will be. ‘This too shall pass’…. that might come in handy this year…
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Reblogged this on Anita Dawes & Jaye Marie.
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Thanks, Jaye x
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I have no idea what my year will be like, but I bet it won’t be ‘normal’… something usually happens whenever I try to do normal…
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What is ‘normal’ anyway? An ever changing ocean of possibilities 🙂
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I always enjoy that return to “normal”…however we perceive it. 💖 Not sure about those chocolate Easter bunnies showing up yet…ugh.
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Bunnyhood is a tad premature, perhaps… but other than that, I’m happy with my ‘normal’ 🙂 ❤
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I took my tree down on the 1st! It didn’t seem very festive this year, for some reason, so it already continued to be ‘normal’ apart from the extra sparkle and shine that was all around! 🙂
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I still had a guest then… the tree came down when he had gone. If it hadn’t been for Ani, I probably wouldn’t have put one up this year. Seems odd to do so just for me.
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Oh, I still love the whole decorating of the tree and everything, but I just couldn’t wait to get it down this year!
I loved Ani’s tennis ball and treat tree. 🙂
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So do I…but just for me, it would have seemed a little pointless. Asit was, I had a couple of visitors, so it was all worthwhile…especially Ani’s face when she saw her tree 🙂
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Bless her. She has the most adorable face as it is 🙂
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She was as delightful as a child when she saw those balls 🙂 And SO careful taking them off the tree 🙂
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🙂
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We do the twelve days or just leave it until all the needles drop off. Depends. Our supermarket put out the Christmas stuff straight after Halloween and never replenished it so there was nothing left after a fortnight. It’s sheets and pillow cases at the moment.
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Easter eggs everywhere…
I miss the galette des rois from France. Must think about making one…
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We bought a stock of them when they appeared in early December. There are none left now of course. It’s possibly because the baker lobby insisted that the supermarket galettes should be out of the way by ‘Les Rois’ so as not to provide cheap competition.
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The bakery ones were always the best anyway 🙂
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Yeah, but have you seen how much they cost??!!!
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Not for the last thirty years, unfortunately…
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I bet they’ve gone up a bit 🙂
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I would imagine so 🙂
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I always tend to leave things up as long as possible, then simply switch to winter/snowmen/bare pine so it’s less of a ‘shock’ to my system.
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It always had to be down by Twelfth Night in my great-grandparents’ home. The tradition stuck.
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I used to hate the period after Christmas, but I don’t mind it these days. I’m not sure I need Easter bunnies in shops, though. I’d feel like I was being rushed. There seem to be so many of them on the shelves too. (I suppose with their being bunnies, that’s not so odd, come to think of it.)
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This was only the ip of the proverbial iceberg… the chocolate bunnies have colonised a whole aisle…
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Goodness, they’re fast!
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Rabbits, you see…
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I saw hot cross buns in the supermarket last week…
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I can live with that… 😉 I’m rather partial to a hot cross bun…even if it is waaay too early.
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The corner where the tree stood looked quite out of sorts for a while, but now everything looks like it’s where it’s supposed to be. 😀
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It always looks pale when the tree goes… then it settles for looking tidy. 🙂
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Back to normal whatever normal is !!
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At least normal is unpredictable 😉
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Yes very true!
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🙂
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Happy New Year, Sue!!
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Happy new year, Traci 🙂
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I’m not sure if normal is the quiet lulls between the crazy periods or the crazy periods between the quiet lulls.
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The two are far too intimately woven to tease apart around here 😉
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I know the feeling
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My tree is still up and most of the decorations. I’m not quite ready to let go of the magic of it all just yet. I toyed with the idea of keeping it up year round and decorating it for all holidays and special occasions. As a stage 4 cancer survivor I know to my core that this moment is all we’ve got. I like to believe it’s by grace.. No guarantees in this life but every day above ground is a good day. 🙂 – Stopping by from Bernadette’s. Happy New Year!
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Odd, isn’t it…I’m not at all superstitious, but my great-grandparents taught me that it was bad luck to take the decrorations down after Twelfth Night…so they are all down by then, even now. Anything that was overlooked or forgotten had to stay up all year round…. so I see no reason why you shouldn’t 🙂
Happy New Year!
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Even the frantic pace of Christmas was normal – for Christmas. I am thankful for less action! My preferred normal is slow paced – normally. Nice post.
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😀 I am slowly coming to enjoy a slow normal too 🙂
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My husband and I are minimalists when it comes to all things Christmas-ish – so I regularly put out my one small Christmas decoration (a candle on a gold glass plate, surrounded by a berry wreath) but this year I also bought some fairy lights and scattered them around a collection of green leafy plants which sit on our log burner during the summer months ( – I live in new Zealand so it’s summer here) – and am planning to leave the fairy lights out just for the novelty value (for me).
So glad I found you – love your style of writing and humour and looking forward to following your blogging journey. Wishing you an awesome 2017! 🙂
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I’m still a child inside…I like fairy lights. I only have the few on my tree, but I could happily add more if I could find the right home for them. I used to have a corner of the old garden, a secluded place where I could have a few at night all year round… just twinkling quietly in the honeysuckle.
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Sounds wonderful – fairy lights and honeysuckle – I can almost smell the honeysuckle…
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I moved recently…I’m going to miss that… until I grow some more 🙂
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Yes, normality presented itself to me on December 21st, when I saw the first box of Cadbury’s Creme Eggs on the shop shelves. Took me a few hours to put up the Christmas decorations yet it’s taken days to take them all back down again. How does that work, Sue? 🤔 I’m sure the Christmas tree fought with me as I tried getting it back in its box. Thankfully, I won and normality has now returned. 😀
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Mine has pride of place in the near-empty shed… so it is neatly wrapped and ready to be decorated next year….much quicker in the flat 🙂
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I baked and cooked my posterior off, and now I am taking a vacation. The tree is still up, as per the request of my son who gets home on Saturday. Sunday it comes down! January is so bleak – we need a fancy holiday in January or early February just to dispel the gloom!
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At least you have Saturday to look forward to 🙂
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Small yet big… profound.
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We can be both 🙂
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