Happy New Year, one and all! But wait! Do we have to put away Christmas decorations now? For those of us who really love the lights, the sparkle and also the feeling of the Christmas Season, looking for reasons to keep the decorations and the cheery feeling going at Abbington Green Bed & Breakfast is pretty easy. So the answer is a resounding, “No, we don’t want to put this holiday away yet!” One good reason is because we have not reached the “Twelfth Day of Christmas” yet…in fact, it’s only the “Eighth Day of Christmas” today.

You probably recall the song that begins, “On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, a partridge in a pear tree”…and you may have heard on the news about how much it would cost this year to provide all the items on all twelve days for your true love…

Anyhow, on the ‘eighth day of Christmas’, aka today, the ‘true love’ is set to receive “Eight Maids-a-milking” plus “seven swans-a-swimming, six geese-a-laying, five gold rings, four calling birds, three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.” Wow. I thought I had storage problems! Where would you put all that?

Back to the original subject: not putting away Christmas decorations yet. Since, according to the song, we have not run out of things to give or receive in the “Twelve Days of Christmas”, Christmas will be cherished at our bed and breakfast in Asheville NC. When we reach the end of those twelve days, then comes Epiphany on January 6th, and my neighbor has always said that “Russian Christmas” (on the Orthodox Christian calendar) is on January 7th… only then will we begin the process of boxing up the trees ( 9 full-size), lights ( thousands of LEDs), the Christmas china and crystal, and the rest of the decorations until next time. Meanwhile, all of the sparkle continues to light up the Winter night and make us smile.