Don’t do it.

I know it’s tempting but don’t.

Christmas is over,  New Year’s Day has come and gone.  All of the lights, the tinsel, the cranberries and the pine boughs that have decorated your house for the past month or two suddenly feels like a relative that has overstayed their welcome. It’s time to pack it up and head out.

Sure, it may be time to put away your decorations but this is no time to pack up your Hope with your Christmas bulbs.

It’s time to pull out the oversized plastic bins labeled ‘Christmas Decor’ and throw everything haphazardly inside. At times cramming things in, hoping that when we open it again next year nothing will be smashed or broken.  ChristmasTIME  has expired and this stuff has to go. If we have to employ the power of our bottom end to add some force to the cover, then so be it.  I haven’t met a lid yet that my rear end couldn’t close.

Of course there are those of you who start out a little different. You are careful to pull out the bins, organize as you go, wrap each bulb carefully in tissue paper and then gently place them in their own individual containers.  You take each strand of lights & wrap them carefully so that next year they will roll off the line without any tangles or knots. But even the majority of you that start off like this will eventually join the ranks of us that stoop to whatever measure is necessary. It’s just a matter of time.

So go ahead and pack up your Christmas leftovers, just don’t pack up all the Hope you’ve been collecting over the past month. 

There’s something magical about the Christmas season. It ignites our hearts with love and hope. We start believing again that there’s hope….hope for that strained relationship to be restored. Hope that we can be the kind of parent, spouse & friend that we desire to be. Hope that we can learn to live our lives with a little more grace for ourselves and for others.  Hope that this world really can change with a simple, small act of love.

After all, that’s what the Christmas story reminds us of…that baby Jesus (our simple small act of love) changes our world and brings us hope throughout the year.

So don’t store it away until next year.  Hope is not a seasonal item. 

Go ahead and display it. Make a place for it in your home and in your heart. Carry it with you. May it be your constant companion on all this coming year has in store for you.