Who else here leaves the tree up til after Jan 1?

[azmouse]

I couldn't imagine all the work to put up the tree just to take it down the day after Christmas.
I want to enjoy it til after the new year. I have an artificial tree so I don't have the fire danger worries of a real tree.

[lizerdbits]

1. I usually do

I like to enjoy it a little more too. I have a real one (which is still taking up a decent amount of water) and we can put them out on our recycling day and they get picked up for mulch making. So the Sunday after the 1st I usually take it down.

[azmouse]

2. That's great that your area does the mulching thing with the trees.

[latebloomer]

3. One year we left our fake tree up till April!

Yes, we are weird.

[azmouse]

4. I've teased my husband about doing that.

In Feb I'd decorate the tree with hearts, March shamrocks and so on....

He didn't go for it. Oh well.... :)

[latebloomer]

8. I think that was the year when my son, who was about 10

put up a drawing of the tree on the wall, titled "In Loving Memory of the Christmas Tree".

Usually we take it down around the end of January.

My husband is a procrastinator and we all just like the pretty lights and ornaments lighting up the bleak winter.

I like your idea about the hearts and shamrocks! April showers?- that wouldn't work,but May flowers- yes!

[MorningGlow]

5. We do

More out of laziness than anything else. But it's usually out of the house by mid-January, more to take advantage of the town curbside mulching service than anything else. Most of our (older, retired, ants-in-the-pants) neighbors have the tree curbside today--tomorrow at the latest. These are the same people who had the tree and all the Christmas decorations up the day after Thanksgiving, so this is just their typical MO.

[azmouse]

7. I put my decorations up early too.

That's the reason my husband calls me the Christmas Mouse.

[JCMach1]

6. Of course... comes down after Wife's b-day Jan. 4

On a scarier note... I had in GF in HS whose mom never took hers down...

Can you say psycho?

To top it off, her mom was a Jehovah's Witness... who don't typically celebrate xmas...

Of course, they are not really supposed to date either...

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. The twelfth day of Christmas isn't until January 6

It's legit to leave it up till then. :-)

And we always did when I was a child.

[Gormy Cuss]

10. Yep. That's my justification for it...

the tree never comes down before 12th night.

[dpbrown]

11. Exactly

That's what we do.

[alsame]

12. Yes, my Catholic grandmother always taught us to keep the tree

up until the Epiphany, January 6. She was very devoted to the Epiphany as a sacred day.

And believe it or not, she died on the Epiphany, 2001.

[Kajsa]

26. Yep, the tree stays up until Epiphany,

January 6th.

Then the tree and all the decorations come down,
and my house looks very empty for a few days till
I readjust to the change.

:)

[mopinko]

27. my mom's birthday.

we also always left it up until then.

i swear, tho, that next year i am not buying a tree. i tried to get out of it this year. the kids (baby is 15) all want a tree, but they are not that into it that they would actually do a nice job of decorating it. i swear this year we have about 15 ornaments. last year was a little better, but not much.
fooey on that i say.

[mwooldri]

28. There's the tradition of bad luck if you leave your tree up after Jan 6th.

Though in the UK the tree went up way closer to Christmas than here. For me in UK tree went up about a week before Christmas, and stayed up until Jan 6th, rarely down before, but never up after the 6th.

Similar thing in other respects - municipal Christmas decorations stay up until after New Years. Even the TV... BBC will put on special Christmas station identification graphics that are displayed before the start of programs and they run until just after New Year. Though their station idents have gone beyond the days of the spinning globe.

Here with my US family it's different. Usually day or two after Thanksgiving - Wham! Big fat tree up in my mother-in-law's house. Day or two after Christmas - Wham! Tree down, lickety-split.

Mark.

[blondeatlast]

13. Usually me, but with my marriage woes, maybe not this year. nt

[blondeatlast]

14. Sorry, dupe. nt

[JoePhilly]

15. I pick a week-end to deal with that.

[Xipe Totec]

16. What tree?

:evilgrin:

[CatholicEdHead]

17. We do

We wait until after Epiphany (12 days afterwords), then take it down. It is a fake tree, so no fire hazard.

[bigwillq]

18. Ours gets taken down

somewhere near New Year's. Usually the day after. Depends what day of the week Jan. 1 falls on.

[grannylib]

19. I leave ours up through Epiphany, January 6. eom

[lizziegrace]

23. Same here. After Epiphany is when the tree is taken down. n/t

[rainbow4321]

20. Mine is one of those 3-feet- tall-lights/limbs already attached

So I will be folding it up and sticking it back it's box on Sunday. It looks really cute once I put garland and Xmas balls on it.


As much as I loved our 6 footer (once it was decorated), it was harder and harder to get motivated to put it up and take it down once the kids got older and lost interest/griped nonstop about putting it together.

[emilyg]

31. We share the same tree and mine will

get folded and put away before the end of day on December 31st.

[trof]

21. In the south, it's considered bad luck to leave the tree up after Jan.1.

BUT...if you CONVERT it...to a
MARDI GRAS TREE, that's fine.
The lights stay on and you hang Mardi Gras stuff on it.

Then you throw a big Mardi Gras party.
:-)

[SoxFan]

22. New Orleanians aren't Southerners!

Not only do they drink like fish, eat things that aren't batter fried, and hate the Cowboys, they leave their Christmas trees up past New Years!

[mwooldri]

29. In UK, it's bad luck if left up after Jan 6th.

But no Mardi Gras to replace it with in UK I'm afraid.

[Rabrrrrrr]

24. Christmas isn't over until Jan. 6; so, yes, the tree stays up past Jan 1

Anything else is an abomination.

[whistler162]

25. You take the tree down?????

weird!!!

[applegrove]

30. I always want the tree up as long as possible. My mom always wants it down really soon after xmass.

It usually stays up till right after new years.

[csziggy]

32. Where I grew up they had a bonfire made from Christmas Trees on New Year's Eve

The tradition was started in the 30s to cut down on house fires from dried out trees since most people put up their trees right after Thanksgiving.



I can remember when the pile of trees were about 30-40 feet tall - they stacked them around a pole so it looked like one giant tree. When I went last year, the trees only went about one third or half way up the pole. It was pitiful. So many people now use artificial trees, there are few to burn. I suspect soon the town will give up and just chop them into mulch.

[blue neen]

33. When we had a real tree, we took it down on New Year's Day...

but, this year we got an artificial tree and are leaving it up 'til about the 6th (at least).

It's actually a white tree with white lights, and I decorated it in silver and blue, so it looks more like a "winter" type tree than a Christmas tree. It's so beautiful and bright and cheerful!

Maybe I'll just redecorate it for Valentine's Day! :)

[LibDemAlways]

34. When my dad was a kid he had two

aunts who lived with his grandmother. He'd visit them in February and the tree would still be up. There would be unopened presents under it too. The explanation was that they enjoyed the holiday season so much they wanted to prolong it.

Of course by February the tree was nothing more than a dried out fire hazard, and sure enough, one year it did, indeed, catch fire. That didn't stop them, though. When we were first married they had us over for dinner in mid-January, and sure enough, the fully decorated tree was very prominent.

I enjoy Christmas as much as anybody, but come the first week of January, I'm done.

[CreekDog]

35. so many here say Christmas goes through Epiphany

:loveya:

I love this place!!!

[Tuesday Afternoon]

36. One year I left it up til March ---

:blush:

[Flaxbee]

37. Russian Orthodox Christmas is Jan. 7, 2009;

we have lots of Russian friends (my husband lived there on and off for 10 or so years) and so the tree stays up until at least then.

Besides, it's a pink tree, so sometimes it becomes a Valentine's Day tree :D It is a 4' tree, and looks so pretty when you walk in the front door, that I have a hard time taking it down during dark winter months.

[crispini]

38. Me!

Have to enjoy it just a little longer!

[Lyric]

39. We put ours up on December 7th, and won't take it down until

right before we go back for school. We'd probably leave it up even longer than that, except that I don't think leaving a Christmas tree all alone in the house with the cat herd and the dog is a very good idea. They tend to romp when their hoomans aren't around. ;)

[azmouse]

41. Isn't it funny how animals are fascinated with Christmas trees?

Don't you get the feeling they think we've lost our minds... a tree in the house?!
When I had a cat she couldn't get enough of staring at the tree and eating tinsel til I learned to use garland instead of the individual strands. I probably don't need to mention how gross the tinsel looked... ummmm... coming out of the cat. LOL

[Phentex]

40. We do, but we start late...

later than most people. We're lucky if it's up by xmas eve! So we go until the weekend after the first.