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I Guess It’s Time to Take My Christmas Tree Down
The perfect way to celebrate Groundhog Day
Last week, a neighbor asked me when I planned to take my Christmas tree down. I told her, quite honestly, that I’d box up all the ornaments and put away the nativity scenes next Friday, on Groundhog Day.
I’ve celebrated Groundhog Day this way for, oh, some thirty-odd years. The tradition started because of the fog. Back then I lived in Utah, where pea-soup fog rolls into the valleys just after Thanksgiving and, like the last party guest who’s determined to camp out on your sofa, finally takes off just before Easter.
Fog may be a simple word but as a weather phenomenon, it’s a major force to be reckoned with. It’s right up there with earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, and the bitter wind chills we get here up north.
When fog is thick and doesn’t lift for weeks on end, it blocks what little sunlight we get in January. That’s when people learn, whether they want the lesson or not, that human beings need the sun. Winter’s long nights and short days are hard enough, but that fog was downright depressing.
Okay. I’ve got to admit here that my own depression was most likely the result of the abuse I was taking. But I wasn’t the only one whose mood took a nosedive when the fog rolled in. In that…
