Why?

True conversation in the car yesterday:

Julia: "Mommy, do you know about woodpeckers?"

Me - "No Julia, what can you tell me about them?"

J- "Well, they are kind of weird, they bang their head against the trees." 

Me- "Hmm, that is kind of weird.  Do you know why they do that?"

J -"Because Christmas is over."

This sentence has permeated every one of our conversations with Julia lately. The one and only time we have said, "because Christmas is over" to Julia was when we took our tree down.  She became very concerned with the rationale behind the removal of our tree, which had become somewhat of a houseguest according to Julia.  Each morning around Christmas Julia would wake up and greet the tree, she'd play hide-n-seek with it and run her toys into the trunk. It was very much a member of our house for that wonderful month.  She loved it more than we knew.  

 A girl and her tree.

 Now, "because Christmas is over" spans every conversation from "why did you take off your Pull-up and pee pee in the crib at daycare?" to "why don't you want to finish your breakfast?"  This is Julia's reasoning for everything she does.  We're not really sure if this is an act of defiance.  It is a common theme when she doesn't want to do something or has done something wrong and is sometimes blurted out with a dose of tears.  I have this image of her 20 years from now leading a protest against the extinction of our forests.  No, it really doesn't make sense to venture to a tree farm, pick out a beautiful, living, piney friend, bring it home, decorate it, sing songs about it, lovingly water it, open gifts under its lovely branches, only to take it down, and haul it to the end of the street for the garbage trucks to remove.  So, when Julia does something that doesn't make sense (which is quite often), why not use this phrase?  

Now we get it.  

So why do those silly woodpeckers bang their heads against trees?
Why do we cut down Christmas trees?

Who knows?  

Christmas is over.