January 2 – “Santa has left the building”

After church yesterday (Great crowd, by the way.  A whole bunch of folks from Corpus Christi were here together.  Why would someone who already lives in a coastal community come to a different coastal community on vacation?  Not real sure about that.  But they were having a great time here.  There was another family there from Austin.  They stuck around after church and helped us take down the Christmas decorations), Chris decided that Christmas was officially over.  That may not sound like a big deal, but let me tell you, when it is time … it is time.  So we began the painstaking process of taking down all the Christmas decorations inside the house.  The outside lights will fall victim today.  I stayed generally out of the way for a while, just until she established her groove.  Move stuff from all the rooms onto the dining table first.  Then bring in the boxes that house the most fragile stuff.  Then comes the rest of the boxes.  That leads naturally into removing ornaments from the tree, at which point I am fully engaged.  And once the ornaments are gone, down comes the tree.  That’s my specialty.  Slowly remove the lights from the top down.  And as the light ball clears each section of the tree, stop and remove and straighten out the branches.  Makes it so much easier to get to the lights that way.  Now even though we have an artificial tree, but it is one of those that has the extra bonus attraction of shedding just like a real tree.  So after taking it apart and boxing it away, we still have to do the dirty deed of sweeping up fake tree needles.  And that task lasts all year long.  But as of now, the stuff is all boxed up.  Chris wanted to wait to put any boxes in the attic, though.  For one, we still have the outside lights to get down.  But she also wanted to do another walk-through of the house to make sure we didn’t leave anything behind.  Ah, Christmas. 

And Chris’ declaration leads to another … Ladies and Gentlemen, Santa has officially left the building.  I trimmed the old Santa beard back down to the scruffy, much-cooler look last night.  Chris admitted that she likes it much better this way (More kissable, maybe?).  It was great for those few moments when the young ones saw me in the costume for the first time.  And I think it added to the ambiance when I read the Christmas story.  I still think it’s important for kids to hear that Santa loves Jesus.  Sure I mean “loves.”  Nicholas was a believer, so he is alive in Christ.  Anyway, it is much cooler, so it will make handling these rough, 70+ degree Galveston Island winters a bit easier.  Now I’m waiting to arrange for a haircut so the top of my head can catch up with my chin.  I will be cool again soon.

Philippians 2:9-11 says, “Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Father, thank you for the chance to live in 70+ degree winters.  I love it.  Amen.