If Christmas really is “the most wonderful time of the year” (though I’ve never liked that song), the days between Epiphany and the Baptism of the Lord might qualify as the least wonderful time of the year.

It’s in these days that Christmas draws to a close, the tree is removed and the lights are dismantled. I don’t have the heart to get rid of the Christmas cards yet — that can wait until the Presentation of the Lord. I know the hard-core also keep their trees up til then, but I think by 2 February there’d be more pine needles on the carpet than there would be on the branches.

As I removed the decorations from the Christmas trees in the parish church and presbytery, Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited came to mind.

church

The strange spectacle of an undecorated tree, standing tall, dry and dead, evokes that most evocative of scenes, when Cordelia secretly observes a priest decommissioning a Catholic chapel

presbytery

He took out the altar stone and put it in his bag; then he burned the wads of wool with the holy oil on them and threw the ash outside; he emptied the holy water stoup and blew out the lamp in the sanctuary and left the tabernacle open and empty, as though from now on it was always to be Good Friday. I suppose none of this makes any sense to you, Charles, poor agnostic. I stayed there till he was gone, and then, suddenly, there wasn’t any chapel there any more, just an oddly decorated room.