The Ghost of (recent) Christmas past

Driving through my neighborhood early this morning I couldn't help but notice one of the last remaining vestiges of Christmas 2010 parked along the curbs up and down the streets of quiet pre-dawn suburbia. Of course I'm talking about the Christmas trash. Wednesday is garbage day in our subdivision and you could clearly see it was the (post) holiday season. Heap after heap of overstuffed trash cans and bags filled with rumpled wrapping paper and those cardboard tubes they come on, the tubes wildly jutting out of the mounds of garbage like porcupine quills, and then there were the boxes. Oh the boxes! Every fulfilled Christmas wish had a box that came with it and every one of those wishes was sitting on the curb ready to be picked up and taken to the landfill this morning. Up one side of the street and down the other you could easily see what Santa brought all of your neighbors. There were only a couple of trees today, the real flood of trees will be next week, the garbage day after New Years. Those remaining trees and Christmas displays will start coming down in a week, maybe two, and when they are all gone that will bring to an end another holiday season. Except for that one guy two streets over that refuses to take down his Christmas lights until Easter…