Welcome to our first Chick Chat of 2025! The holidays are such a special time…but there’s always a bit of a transition required between joining into holiday cheer and kicking off another year of work. Generally speaking, are you someone who would rather stay in holiday mode or get on with the new adventure already?  Do you pack up the decorations asap or linger over those lights a little longer? And what’s your best tip for transitioning from the holidays back to real life?

Lisa Q. Mathews

I may be the odd Chick out on this question, but our family holiday dates are fluid. We all want to be together at “Christmas,” so some years we adjust the calendar to accommodate spouses’ families and pre-school Dread Gumboos. We have held Christmas/New Year’s as late as Martin Luther King Day—and yes, Santa makes return trips! It’s dark here in NH during January, especially since we live in a piney house in the woods, so after “Christmas” we move to a middle ground I call “Hygge.” The twinkle lights and boughs and sleighbells stay up, along with a smattering of sparkly, cheery decor. The drinks/snack table (complete with moose mugs a la the Christmas Vacation movie) remain as well. This weekend several NH towns will hold their annual Christmas tree bonfires. Really. It’s a looooong winter here.

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 Ellen Byron

It’s funny, I was just thinking the other day how it’s much easier to transition in CA than it was in NY. Back east, it was so depressing seeing all the decorations come down because you knew the long, cold days of winter were upon you. Here, the weather during the holidays is the same as after, and much more manageable. One thing I hate though, is how stores start dumping holiday stuff and putting out Valentine’s Day items before the holidays are even over.

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Marla Cooper

I’m often hesitant to exit holiday mode because I wait so late to get into the holidays! When it’s 86 degrees in mid-December, it’s hard to think about sweaters and tinsel and twinkly lights. So when the tree doesn’t go up until December 22, it also doesn’t come down til … well, let’s just say later than most people would consider normal. But, tree aside, I’m still ready to move on from the holidays pretty quickly. One of my biggest holiday traditions has become tackling big organizational projects. It’s kind of a combination of the fresh start the new year provides and the fact that my husband and I both end up with a lot of time off while everyone we know is off visiting their families. My favorite tip for getting on with things? My father-in-law put his Christmas tree on rollers and leaves it in a closet fully decorated. He can roll it out whenever the mood strikes, and roll it back in as soon as he’s ready to be done with it! 

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Cynthia Kuhn

The day after Thanksgiving, I’m the one hopping up and down, begging everyone else to decorate for Christmas. And I adore all the seasonal hoopla: you can never have too many twinkle lights! But the minute that our celebration has passed—and I do mean the very minute—I’m ready to get our house back again. Team Pack It Up Fast here. (The going-back-to-work-part is different, however…that I’d rather drag out for a good long while if possible. Like: until summer.) Best Tip: Drink all the leftover eggnog while un-decorating! Efficient AND fun. 

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Vickie Fee

My seasonal transition starts in earnest when I start wearing my wool-lined Uggs. This happens when I start shuffling through white powder outdoors. As most of you know, we get a good bit of snow where I live. (Basically, as in every part of my life, I change, adapt, whatever… when circumstances force me to. ) We haven’t taken down Christmas decorations. We didn’t put up any Christmas decorations, except for our tiny pre-lit tree. No rush on that. We ARE planning to send out Christmas cards. We started working on those, but did not finish and send out before we hit the road for Tennessee for Christmas. A few people have asked, but this is not the first year we’ve sent them after Christmas, after Epiphany, after New Year’s. They’re coming.

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Leslie Karst

Even though it all seems rather odd here in the middle of the tropics where the coconut palms are waving, the sea is an aqua blue, and the trade winds are bringing lovely breezes in eighty degree weather, I do love the winter holiday season: all the get-togethers, parties, fun drinks and food, and decorating the house with fairy lights, the Christmas tree and crèche, not to mention the Channuka menorah.

But I’m also ready to have it end after over a month of festivities. Which for us means January 6th. Not because of Epiphany/Twelfth Night/el Día de los Reyos Magos. Okay, maybe because of all those things. But also because that is our Jack Russell mix Ziggy’s birthday! So once she’s had her birthday treat (this year it was a slice of challah bread, which she adores), it’s down with the lights, out with the tree, and Baby Jesus and all his entourage gets put back in the box until next year.

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Becky Clark

I am definitely one who likes to move it along. When the kids were young, the holidays were a lovely, lingering time. They were on year-round school so they’d have their long break from Thanksgiving until Jan 6 or so. It was so fantastic. Nothing was hurried, nobody ever got sick, everything got done in its own time. But now that it’s just us, mostly, it’s all pretty boring and I’m ready to get to the next thing. Plus, I’m one who LOVES a clean calendar just waiting for me to fill it up with plans for the coming year. The only tip I have is to make sure you have a great calendar to beckon you through December!

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Jennifer Chow

I admit it, I’m a lingerer. We’ve been known to keep our decorations—until the next year. Once, my friend complimented me on how we were ready early for festivities; I let them know that we’d kept the kids’ red, green, and gold decorations for way too long, and it was too late to take them down. You’ll also find us trying to repurpose our wreaths into “dried floral arrangements” as accessories. P.S. We’ve still got our Christmas tree up. But, to be honest, we could use a little cheer over here in L.A. right now…

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