I served my mission in Latin America, wherein December 25th is but the first day of Christmas, kicking off 12 straight days of parties and festivities, ultimately culminating on Three Kings Day on January 6th. I much prefer it this way–you feel much more satiated with your Holiday celebrations, and it prevents Christmas day from feeling like such a damn anti-climax, as it inevitably does in the United States. The Mexican Day of the Dead has really been catching on in America over the past decade, but the Latino 12 Days of Christmas have not yet.

I keep hoping and praying that it does, because at present, the day after Christmas in the U.S. is just this awkward, deflating lurch, that feels a little too much like a Sunday morning mood (not helping things is the fact that the 26th really does fall on a Sunday this year). We Americans need to find a healthier way to wrap up our Christmas celebrations, because at present, our only options are 1) tear down all the decorations by New Years, leaving us feeling as empty and barren as the winter landscape we had specifically thrown up our lights to resist against; or 2) prolong our Christmas decorations into January, which only ends up leaving us feeling pathetic, desperate, and sad. Neither option is ideal.

Understandably, most Americans don’t even want to think about the inevitably post-Christmas come-down; hence why we’re so unprepared for it, even though we know it’s coming, year after year after year. As such, I’ve only been able to identify maybe 3 songs out of the literal hundreds—nay, thousands—in the expansive Christmas catalogue that even try to acknowledge it. If you’re LDS, Michael McCleann’s “I Cry The Day I Take The Tree Down” from The Forgotten Carols is the most readily identifiable; but presumably, if you’re on this site and/or reading this series, it’s because you’re looking for something other than frickin’ Michael McClean for a change. Fortunately, I got you covered, fam. So, until we as an Anglo-American culture smarten up and start celebrating Christmas rationally like Latinos, here’s a pair of songs for your post-Christmas comedown:

First up, Low’s “Taking Down the Tree,” the penultimate track from their aforementioned 1999 Christmas EP.

It’s a song about the post-Holiday disenchantment–“Another broken reindeer,” “Another nosebleed”–while remembering the magic that so enchanted us in the first place–“We set the star so high/so high/so high…”

Low songs have a tendency to drag out by design, but this one is mercifully short: Low seemed to intuit that even the darkest songs about depression can’t hold a candle to the brutality of songs about disenchantment. Best to move on quickly, before it has a chance to sink in.

And then we have the 1972 track “Souvenirs“^[1]of which there is an excellent Andrew Bird cover from just last year, by the late, great singer-songwriter John Prine^[2]whom Low has even written a song about before:

“All the snow has turned to water/Christmas days have come and gone/Broken toys and faded colors/Are all that’s left to linger on,” he belts out in his trademark gravely voice. It is likewise a song about loss, memory, and melancholy. Yet note how not even Prine mentions Christmas again beyond that first line; the post-Holiday come-down is too much to dwell on, even for the man who literally launched his career by singing, “There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes/Jesus Christ died for nothin’ I suppose.” This is why we Americans need a proper 12 Days of Christmas–the world is hard enough as it is without abruptly disenchanting our biggest holiday. Make December 25th the first day of Christmas for a change! It would be a saner world if we did.