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Our Christmas tree is down. The string of tiny white lights outside, around our front door (that I would have liked to have up for just one more week, thank you) are stripped. The once beautifully wrapped presents of pent-up surprise are put away.

I'm staring at a stack of 110 Christmas cards, and 110 white envelopes, piled high on my front hall table. Hard as I try to pep myself into writing them, it's hard. Christmas is over. The radio station that has been playing Christmas music 24/7 since before Thanksgiving has gone back to playing pop hits. Sales have emptied aisles of stores' shelves.

Exhaling a deep, resigned sigh, I stare at our stack of unwritten cards.

Every year, I think - no, I swear to myself - THIS IS GONNA BE THE YEAR! This year, we, not they, will be the oh-so-obnoxiously-early card senders. Yes, for once, we - not they - will be the ones who get cards in the mail before Thanksgiving Day. This year, it will be our family and friends who receive the perfect picture card of our perfect family

This year, it will be they - not us - who will open OUR card before they've even eaten their lunch of turkey leftovers, their stomachs squelching the sinking feeling that, only one day after Thanksgiving, the Christmas circus train has left the station and they - not us - have missed it.

Why even bother, I ask myself in this post-holiday fog? Why not let it all go, the overboard decorations, inside and outside the house? Reconstructing my mother's Christmas village on a bed of white fluffy cotton "snow?" Participating in the outrageously fun annual Christmas cookie swap where I forget, until the night before, that in order to be admitted entrance, I must come bearing 13 to 15 dozen cookies of one cookie type in order to receive the same amount back of a wide-ranging assortment?

This year, I mean, last year, I started out strong.

Every year, I try.

After Halloween, I popped into the post office and bought sheets of stamps bearing the Madonna and baby Jesus. I gathered enough wintry-themed return address labels, checked my list twice of family, friends and others. This year, I'd be oh-so-ready.

When an online "deal" for luxurious cards showed up in my e-mail, I clicked "yes!" A disclaimer popped up: To receive cards before Dec. 24, the order would need to be placed by Dec. 5.

No problem.

Eschewing my annual, one-hour, late-night trip to the local big-box pharmacy chain, I designed online my fancy cards to be printed on heavy stock paper. Dec. 5, I hit "send." Visions of friends and far-flung family seeing the early postmark date - anything before Dec. 24 - danced in my head.

Then the mad holiday rush began: School recitals, not one but two daughters' birthday parties, various Christmas parties, cookie parties (I cheated. My husband made the batter), fighting a two-week cold, hosting a sit-down Christmas dinner, Boxing Day parties, out-of-state family visiting for the week, an annual Yankee swap/sleepover on New Year's Eve.

We survived it all. Vacation's over, school's back in session.

But Christmas isn't really over, as Father James Field, my late pastor, used to say from his pulpit. The Christmas season extends, he'd tell us, not just to Little Christmas/the Feast of the Epiphany, (this year, Jan. 6), but an additional week! Christmas seasons ends with the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. This year, that's Sunday, Jan. 12.

Father Field would say (looking pointedly to me, I always thought) that, for anyone berating themselves for getting their cards out late, there was still time. Without having to go to confession, we late mailers received, if not forgiveness, a reprieve. Feeling re-energized, I'd leave church, make a pot of tea and write them all out, confident in my knowledge (even smugly superior) that I was still "on time."

My friends and family have come to expect no less. This isn't the first time we've been late getting cards out. At one Boxing Day party I told our English friend, Rob, that our cards would once again be late. "Oh, I look forward to getting your cards, Kathy. When will they be out? April?" We laughed.

Secretly, I enjoy sending our cards out late, knowing they will get more attention, not crushed in the bushels of mail crammed during Christmas week. And I enjoy thinking about each person I write to, adding a special note on their card.

Pulling out our tattered address book, I pour myself a fresh cup of coffee, turn on some jazz and begin.

As I write, one thought runs through my head like the Nasdaq sign in New York City's Times Square: Just wait till next year, I mean, this year. I'm gonna be on time.

Consider it my New Year's resolution.

- Kathy Shiels Tully

Kathy Shiels Tully launched two dreams - becoming a writer and getting married - by proposing to her then-boyfriend on The Boston Herald's op-ed page on Leap Day 1996. Today, she's a regular correspondent for The Boston Globe and Boston Globe Magazine, writing about wide-ranging topics, plus travel stories, essays, people profiles (Carly Simon!) and restaurant reviews. Her stories also appear in national and regional magazines, and Chicken Soup for the Soul and Thin Thread books. She lives in the Boston area with her husband and their two dreams, daughters Bridget and Katie.