Thoughts While Taking Down the Christmas Decorations

A Year in the Death 1/5/21

My wife took this shot of our tree the night we put it up.

Kathy and I took down our Christmas tree and other holiday decorations on Saturday afternoon. That was unusually early for us. But our schedules over the next few weeks are such that if we didn’t take the decorations down over the weekend, the next earliest we could take them down would be the weekend of January 16–17. And that seemed too long to keep them up.

As we worked, I started to notice how many times one of us alluded to what we should do differently next year when we put them up. And that got me thinking about this writing project.

Isn’t it amazing how often we talk about the future as if it were an absolute certainty? We discuss our next day, week, month, year…as if it were a given we’ll be around to experience them.

On one hand, this expectation of the future is perfectly naturally and beneficial. After all, living 100% for the here and now could lead to disastrous consequences in our relationships, financial situations, physical health, and myriad other areas of our lives.

However, our future orientation also comes with drawbacks. The biggest of which is wasting time — a commodity that should be treated as our most priceless possession but is often spent frivolously, as if we possessed it in endless abundance.