Day of Discontent

It's the day after Christmas, and you're asking yourself: Is that all there was? Some toys might already be broken -- the kids' XBox, you sort of hope, not your new DVD Handycam camcorder. The pile of brightly wrapped boxes under the tree has been reduced to clutches of shredded paper and bits of shiny ribbon. The tree is beginning to shed -- time to get rid of it. (If you're truly efficient, the tree is in the dumpster and the ornaments back in their boxes.) That mountain bike you so fervently desired 24 hours ago seems a poor antidote for the strange emptiness you now feel.

You can blame capitalism for your mild depression -- the products, the advertising, the hype that made you think that it was absolutely necessary to surfeit yourself and your family with more than any of you deserved. Or you can blame the American cultural penchant for the super-sized, the need in this most prosperous of nations to celebrate our holidays in the most ostentatious style possible: 1,000 mini-lights, instead of a dozen, strung along the rain-gutter.

Next year: simplicity. Organic foot-warmers for all, hand-creweled from sustainable Guatemalan hemp.

Next year: no January surprise credit card bill.

Next year: no Christmas.

It's psychologically inevitable that whenever there is a big buildup, there is a big letdown. These days, the Christmas buildup starts early, gathers momentum through rounds of office parties, frenzies of shopping and cooking, and frantic runs to airports to pick up relatives -- and then suddenly fizzles after the presents are unwrapped on Christmas morning.

A few years ago, I read an ad for a series of holiday floral gifts that you could shower upon your love. It was called "The 12 Days of Christmas," except that the 12 days preceded Christmas, not followed it as they do in the carol. Every morning, from Dec. 13 to Dec. 24, a messenger would deliver a different yuletide plant or bouquet to your beloved's door. On Dec. 25 and afterward, there was nothing at all -- not very cheery.

In the old days, people had it psychologically easier because Christmas did not begin until Christmas morning. In Chaucer's time, people watched the December sun gleam low and pale as the frost hardened the ground, and then, just as the season reached bottom at month's end, they lighted the fire, broke out the boar's head and the wine, and " 'Nowel!' crieth every lusty man." As late as Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" in the 19th century, Scrooge & Marley Inc. was not the only establishment in London to keep its doors open until close of business on Christmas Eve. There was no Christmas letdown, but rather a soft landing, as people feasted and eased themselves through New Year's Day and beyond, until they finally had to do something about the spring plowing.