Christmas and chaos both start with "c"

She could not remember a Christmas that did not start and end in clutter. Each year, the first Christmas card arrived in the mail long before a place had been cleared for it. Envelopes were piled at the edge of the desk, waiting for her to send responses. They joined books in stacks, bits of paper and work. The desk longed for simplicity.

The coffee table also longed to be perfectly itself. Instead, it gathered all the things that people held in their hands as they walked into the house. Magazines and shopping bags and gloves and keys created a community on the tabletop. Their endless chatter would have set the table's teeth on edge - had it possessed teeth.

Then, in a grand sweep of determination, the clutter cleared. Tabletops gleamed and made friends of the Christmas ornaments that appeared. Papers were hidden. Cards were displayed on neat garlands of ribbon. Christmas had come to the house.

The tree introduced its own element of chaos, dropping needles in living room, in dining room, in hallway. Its lights were not beacons; they sprawled across the branches and hinted at hope. Bags and boxes appeared and were arranged around the base of the tree. The family hoped - as it always hoped - that the tree would stand throughout the holiday.

Almost without warning, the house filled with people, with laughter and noise, with coming and with going. People ate dessert first and they ate it in every room of the little house. There was decorum in their coming and going but none in the space between them.

Then. Oh then. Wine bottles and chocolate and music and movies. Wrapping paper and bows and ribbon that sparkled on the floor. Bits of bone left behind when the dog got a better offer. The detritus began creeping back into piles.

The house sighed. And regrouped. Mail arrived, and so did the groceries. Gloves were dropped and keys misplaced.

Clutter introduced the figures in the nativity to the figures in the bill from the telephone company.

Clutter reigned as long as Christmas.