I like routine, until I get bored. Then I like excitement and change, until I get overwhelmed. Then I go back to liking routine. It's a cycle that finds itself exacerbated in the final weeks of the year. I used to look forward to ringing in the new year, now I'm just glad that the seemingly endless reasons to decorate are over.
December 26 is typically the day I want my house devoid of any seasonal decorations. Gone, out, packed up. I once wanted to decorate a tree with simple, newly made paper ornaments and only light it with colored spotlights. That way I could have it taken down and out in mere seconds.
It never came down very quickly when I was a kid. I remember one year the tree was still up in February. That was the real problem with having a fake tree, it could stay. A real one would die, dry up, present itself as a fire hazard that forced people to remove it. But a deep green polymer pine standing in the living room could be there so long the residents forget to even notice it. It just hides in the room, taking up half the space and turning into the night light of the house. Such was the case when I was a kid, it just lived there. It would be there so long it blended in with the natural order, such that trying to remove ornaments in a pretense to its disappearance was disturbing such order to such a degree that my attempts were thwarted.
I once suggested an old, old, incredibly old school Christmas decorating time frame by setting up our tree on Christmas Eve, and taking it down on Epiphany (Jan 6). My wife replied with the kind of stare that could freeze oil.
I've resigned myself to the fact that stores have valentines displays out already.
