By January 2 the frenzy is spent. Lights and decorations come down.
Dry trees appear on the curbside, a few bits of tinsel still clinging to their branches.
But of course the point is that they have nothing to fall back on, and so they collapse. Those appeals tug stubbornly on our heartstrungs, and those charities receive thousands of generous donations. The center of history Human misery is tragic whenever it occurs, but there is a special poignancy in the fact that in a culture originally built upon Christian faith, depression is most common at precisely the time when believers are still celebrating the Nativity. If that is the case, then we Christians have not done our job well. In the blinding light that shines out from Bethlehem, sadness has no lasting place.