You know what I like? I like regular days, days that aren’t holidays, that don’t require special foods or wrapping paper or unusual decorations that include bringing something that’s normally outside into the house for several weeks.

Not that I’m talking about Christmas, necessarily. Well, all right, I am talking about Christmas, but I don’t mean to suggest I don’t enjoy the holiday. I love the holiday! I just also love when it’s over and the decorations have been put away and the refrigerator is no longer crammed with Christmas remains: a dab of sweet potatoes, a scoop of mashed potatoes, and seven small plastic tubs of bread dressing. (Note to self: Get some large plastic tubs.) Not to mention the turkey, which immediately after the holiday looks like a victim from that Warren Zevon song. Werewolves of London again, I say to myself.

My point is, I love when life and the living room return to normal. I’m pretty sure that the ability to value both Christmas and the departure of Christmas indicates a personality in balance, a willingness to accept the status quo, whatever it is, a nature that goes placidly amid both the noise and haste of the holiday and the stunned silence of the day after the holiday.

Of course, not everyone sees it that way. Recently a friend listened to me singing the praises of a Christmas well celebrated and now, oh joy, over, and then she leaned in to look me in the eye.

“When did you start hating Christmas?” she asked.

For a moment, I could see myself on top of Mount Crumpit with a Grinch body and a Grinch reindeer (my own dog, a set of antlers tied to his head) and a fiendishly Grinchlike expression on my furry face. Then I attempted a recovery.

“I don’t hate Christmas,” I said. “I like Christmas. But I’d hate for it to go on and on and, you know, on. I also like when it’s over.”

My friend had her doubts about that. She didn’t actually say, “Yeah, right,” and her lip remained politely uncurled, but I could tell. I do like Christmas, though. I can’t deny I liked it best when someone else did the thinking and the planning and the baking and the cooking and the shopping and the wrapping and the cleaning and the general toiling, but I like it now, too. At least, I like it in splotches: the music. The eggnog. The free parking. Outdoor lights, sometimes. The smell of fresh pine. Interesting Christmas cards. Seeing people I love to see.

And wowsers, do I like when it’s over, when the tree has been stripped of decorations and carried outdoors and the furniture has been pushed back to its usual arrangement; when the empty boxes have been stacked in the cupboard near the cartons of ornaments and wreaths and window candles; when no speck of holiday cheer remains anywhere, not counting the thousands of pine needles clumped in the Dyson’s plastic bin.

In fact, right now the very thought of the holiday-free days and weeks ahead is enough to make light my heart. Absolutely nothing in the immediate future but Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Jan. 16! Yay!

Martin Luther King Jr. Day is a holiday a person can appreciate: Inspirational speeches, church services, high school choir music and free parking meters.

No obligation to haul a tree or anything else — dairy goats, lilac bushes, gas grills, wading pools — into the house. Furthermore, MLK Day doesn’t require a person to cook a specific meal involving large, bulky birds, gallons of stale bread and various kinds of squash. If any music is more likely to be heard than any other, it would be “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” and who ever hears that stirring anthem often enough? (Whereas the words “stirring anthem” never have been applied to “Jingle Bell Rock,” peppy though that song may be.)

Yes, I walk with an extra bounce in my step these days because Christmas isn’t here. It isn’t, except in the strictest sense, even coming. The goose is slender. The old man’s hat is empty; the old man himself is in Florida. It’s just winter now, with short days, long evenings and no extra items on the to-do list. I’m not positive about this, because Christmas is fine too, but after Christmas may be the most wonderful time of the year. With no turkey for roasting, no dinners for hosting and no one to shop for all day; we will spend our time lazing and possibly grazing for hours at the China Buffet É

Well, I think you get the idea.

Write to Margo Bartlett at mbartlett@thisweeknews.com.