AFTER CHRISTMAS

When I was a kid the day after Christmas was a wonderful day: I knew I had a
week or so off from school and I had some new toys or games to play. If I
grew bored with them I'd just go to the library and take out some more books
to keep me occupied. If it had snowed, I'd go sledding over on Selden Street
with Barry Solomon and the other kids. 

The torn wrapping paper was stuffed into empty department store bags (
plastic trash bags didn't become popular until the 1960's) and the boxes that
toys and appliances came in were hauled out by the curb for the city
trash trucks. This was how we knew what  the other kids got for Christmas
or Hanukkah. Inside, gifts had to be removed from under the tree to our
rooms a day or so after Christmas so the pine needles under the Christmas
tree could be vacuumed up.  
  
If Christmas fell on a Friday or Monday that year there'd be a round of visits
to our McFarland and McCue relatives or they'd visit us. So Christmas decorations
stayed up for several weeks, sometimes to the end of January. When we were
living on Capen St. my Mom used Glass Wax stencils to decorate our apartment
windows but she stopped after one year when cleaning the windows off was
harder than usual. Besides, nobody could see them anyway since the apartment
was on the third floor! We also only used "angel hair" to decorate the tree
once.

But eventually we'd take off the decorations, lights, and garlands from the tree
and pack them away, and the tree would be hauled out to the curbside. If it
snowed before trash pickup it might be out there an extra week or two. In time,
as we grew older, the artificial tree would be disassembled and taken down to
the cellar.

Christmas was  over.