Welfare Check

I just wanted to check on you because I’ve been concerned. It’s mid-March and whenever I pass by your house, I notice your Christmas wreath is still on your front door. Is everything OK?

I’m not seeing any mail piled up on your front step, so I know not to suspect the worst and call the police. Still, this is concerning. The Christmas season ended two months ago. You’ve had the opportunity to since then to place two more holiday signifiers on your door but it’s still Christmas over there.

Has there been some sort of drastic life change since December? I can only assume there must have been. After all, you had time and energy shortly after Thanksgiving to put out that festive wreath. Since it takes an equal amount of time to put the wreath away as it did to put the wreath up, I can assume something is drastically different now.

Maybe you found out on New Year’s Day that you’ve been appointed the academic provost of an Ivy League university and no longer have time for petty things like keeping one’s holiday décor current. Or you drank a particularly bad batch of eggnog and the doctors have advised you it’s still too risky to engage in anything as strenuous as walking all the way to the front door, lifting up that 2-pound circle of fake evergreens and pine cones, and putting it in a box.

What’s that? You say you just don’t have your act together? Carry on, then.