Trimming & Untrimming

Pure Magic!
Untrimming the tree: I started Tuesday, finished today. My friend Cate ~ a girl, like me, who just loves Christmas ~ talked me through the last few steps over the phone this morning. Even long distance, it's a more light - hearted task if you have an undecorating - buddy with whom to reminisce. In honor of Cate's assistance, I must post the most breath - taking Christmas tree photos I have ever seen (above & below). Yes! These are Cate's fabulous ornaments, placed by her unerring hand!

A Swan A' Swimming
Tea for Two
Goodbye Santa . . . 'Til Next Year . . .
I know I've shared the following poem before, but it is so absolutely perfect for the occasion, allow me to post it once again:

UNTRIMMING THE TREE

Now all that scintillation is a chore.
What they so recently assembled
Piece by piece in imitation
Of every year for twenty years ago

Each day became more everyday.
The delicate contrivances ignored,
This clutter in a corner of the eye
Now is an hour on the stepladder

And woman's work. This afternoon,
The sunlight brave and January thin
Reflecting on her, she sets down
Lightlier than they lifted them

Angel and orb and cardboard cornucopia,
The candy cane old as the eldest child.
Once she has packed away the annual farm
(Each cotton sheep plump as a thumb),

Hanging the glassy surface of the lake
Up on its hook in the back bedroom,
She sends the snowy field out to the laundry.
Arms full of a great weightlessness she arises

Toward the airless year in the black attic.
The Season's Greetings flutter in the trash
Out in the alley and the tree,
Naked, imitates mere nature.

All's done but this -- that at the last she blind
The windows of the Advent Calendar
From which next year again shall stare
The forest animals as day by day,

As the great Day approaches
Until the Manger stands revealed,
Husband and child and wife, restored
Out of the storm, once more shall be assembled.

by John N. Morris, 1931 - 1997
American author and educator [more on Morris]