This morning we decided to take down the Christmas decorations. When I was a kid at home, we took the decorations off the tree at least on New Year's Eve because we had a party and burned the tree that night and had fireworks. Buddy, Florence, Phyllis and Rex came and sometimes other friends. We always had to go back to school right after New Year's Day anyway, so Christmas was pretty well over.
Tom's youngest son, John, was born on December 30, so the Scharbach family tradition was to take Christmas decorations down before the thirtieth so that he could have a birthday uncluttered by other stuff. Since he never made it up here this year because of weather, we left things up longer. Tom had mentioned taking it down a few days ago, but Joe and Evelyn were coming to visit (they came Sunday) and I wanted the tree up for them to see.
In the monastery, of course, the tree stayed up until Epiphany (traditionally January 6, but now always on a Sunday around that time), because that is when the church celebrates the visit of the Wise Men, who were the ones, after all, who brought the gifts.
The cats, being cats, do not like change. It took them a week or so to adjust to the tree being up and all the other stuff. Yesterday and today they had taken to batting the tree skirt around and batting at the tree, and so we figured it was time to act before they started climbing the tree and breaking ornaments. Naturally when we started taking it down, they got all upset because now they are used to it and getting rid of it has become a change. (That is not a picture of our cat, but it is an image of what we wanted to avoid.)Helen and Jay will be coming through on January 2 to take Buddy the Dog home. That means we can move the cats' food back to where it belongs. That is a change they will probably approve.
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