And that is that

 Got home and took down my tree. (My mother and I took hers down on Monday). 

The season's over, it's nothing much now until....well, Easter, I guess, because I don't do Valentine's Day (not much point), and I'm the only one who cares about my birthday...

And I always feel like I never enjoyed it quite enough, never quite reached that epiphany of understanding the Incarnation, and it was over all too soon.

I did watch a lot of Christmas movies; I've probably seen most of the "classic" ones at this point and a few of the modern ones. One of the things I like about them - and always look forward to experiencing again when they're back on again in December - is that they do show a world better and kinder than the one we inhabit. Barbara Stanwyck's lady-felon is set on the path to rehabilitation by the kindness of the women playing mother and aunt to Fred MacMurray's prosecutor. The Bishop and his wife's marriage is partially love and purpose are rekindled by the presence of Cary Grant's angel (whom they don't remember after he leaves). And Jimmy Stewart's George Bailey gets the grand gift of knowing that yes, actually, he mattered and made a difference in the world, a difference for good.

And even if we know things about the actors now - like how Bing Crosby really wasn't a kindly avuncular figure, at least not to his family, in real life - in the movies it seems easier to overlook that (at least for me) when he's playing a young priest. (and also, all the suspicions, all the bad things we know now about various institutions, those don't exist in the alternate celluloid world of the film; good people are genuinely good without ulterior motives; everything is SIMPLER than in real life. And I miss that. I dislike how complicated real life is and how you really do have to be as wise as a serpent as well as being as gentle as a dove. (and the gentleness, it seems, is optional now)

It was also nice, I realized, to be taken care of on some level. Oh, I did some of the housework and I did a few "handyman" type tasks that either my mother lacks the hand strength for now (getting a stripped-thread hose socket off the outdoor spigot) or is probably something not wise to do alone (going up on a ladder to change a bulb that is high up and is difficult to change because of how the light fixture is configured). But she did almost all of the cooking, and I would get asked what I wanted for dinner. Here, alone, I have to figure out what I want, and get the supplies for it (and my mom's preferred grocery is both closer and far better-stocked than my preferred grocery here), and fix it, working out all the timing (and when you get home late after a meeting? You have to have some "pantry fixings" on hand that will make food fast), and deal with the leftovers, and clean up afterward...And I probably don't eat as healthfully here alone, where it feels like a LOT some days to choreograph getting the vegetables cooked and the main dish and whatever I might have as a starch....

It is just nice to have someone else there and to be taken care of a little. I don't get that often; most commonly it's when I get carry out food to bring home or when there's a potluck at church (and even then: I still have prepared something).

But now, it's back to it. Classes start Monday, I already have appointments lined up with people who need to be advised into classes. Christmas is over for the year, and it's time to go back to work.