Where are the Christmas trees?

“I can help you here.”

As I stepped up the library window to check out my books, my check-out person asked another, “What was that all about?”

Hanging up the phone her co-worker explained, “She was incensed that she couldn’t come and look at the Christmas trees.”

Every year, organizations from the community fill the library with decorated Christmas trees that highlight their products, services, and people. Each one is unique and imaginative. Once I pause to look at one, I notice the next, am intrigued by another, and end up checking out most of them.

However, the upset woman had called the library on January 23. I handed my books to the worker and chuckled, “I guess she was a day late.”

Scanning my books the worker replied, “About twenty-two days late!” All the Christmas trees had been put away right after New Years.

Wait a minute. Doesn’t the Festival of Lights in St. Augustine run through January 28? When we rode the trolley around the city last weekend (January 22), people dressed like elves were still giving out cookies and hot cider. Several of my neighbors still plug in their outdoor Christmas lights three weeks into the new year.

The nerve. Christmas put away before February? So soon? Come on, the Christmas trees only went up at the library in November!