Once I invited a bunch of my children’s school friends over for lunch at our home.  It was the end of the school year, and we soon would be going our separate ways on summer vacation.  One of the mothers wondered if there would be enough food, offering to go and pick up something for all the kids.  I assured her that I had plenty, because it was “ice box clean-out” around our house for a couple of days.  Another mother (not from these parts) remarked, “Oh my, you really are Southern, aren’t you?”

I don’t know about you, but ice box clean-out was a regular ritual in my family when I was growing up.  Each time there was a transition in our house- leaving for vacation, or a change of seasons, for example- we would eat up whatever was in the freezer and refrigerator.  Most of the time, the meals had no rhyme nor reason.  We were cleaning out and making a fresh start; out with the old and in with the new.  Some of the items had way too much freezer burn – they went straight to the trash.

This is what the transition after Christmas into the new year is like for me, spiritually speaking.  Although Advent and Christmas fall right at the beginning of a new Church calendar year, the logistics of my life as a parent make this season feel as if it is the end of something, just like the secular calendar defines it.  Once I “get through” Christmas, I can make a clean start, get my head above water, and begin with a new attitude and new resolutions.  I always have an epiphany of sorts, right around the feast of the Epiphany.  It is at that time, and not really before that, that I seem to feel as if the old has passed and the new has come.  Spiritual freezer burn is in the trash, so to speak, and I am excited about fresh spiritual food again.

Recently, just for old times sake, it occurred to me to clean out my ice box AND my pantry in one fell swoop.  What an epiphany!

Chick “B”