God, that’s funny.
You may be in my small neighborhood. I was taking some things out to the car last night (that I wanted to take to work this morning) and I noticed two houses down the block with massive white-bulb light displays on, yet no other light in the house was burning. Personally, I just figured that these display lights were on timers and that those home-owners have condos in Florida where they are wintering. I’m sure they’ll be back when it gets warm again to take the lights down.
We just took the ornaments off ours yesterday. It took 2+ hours (yeah, I have a lot of ornaments). Though it’s an artificial tree (hence no fire hazard) and we haven’t plugged it in since early January.
It would still be decorated if I weren’t going to have 3 people traipsing through my living room in a couple of days, toting a couple hundred pounds of Girl Scout cookies.
Now we just have to lug the boxes downstairs, followed by the segments of the tree (it’s a big one and a major hassle to move… another reason for the sloth in de-ornamentation).
We just took ours down last weekend. Our son just celebrated his 8th birthday yesterday so we needed to get it down and clean house so Mom & MIL wouldn’t pitch a fit about our messy house. It was too pretty to take down but we needed the room. 
A co-worker of mine leaves her tree up year-round. She just changes the decorations to reflect the season and upcoming holidays. First, it’s a Christmas tree, and then out come the red, shiny hearts for Valentine’s day. In turn, there will be Easter egg ornaments, shamrocks for St. Paddy’s Day, little flags for the Fourth (also used for President’s Day and Memorial Day), little stuffed Pilgrims for Thanksgiving, and tiny bats and pumpkins for Halloween.
Mine has to be down by January 5 at the latest.
Our neighbors across the street–a young couple that had a baby about 4 months ago*–still have their inflatable decorations in the yard. They’re deflated but we haven’t had any snow this year until this weekend so it’s not like that was a hinderance. I think the guy is just lazy. They had their father/father-in-law living with them for a while. The guy had an artificial leg from the knee down and he was always out in the yard doing yardwork, fixing the car, putting up the Christmas decorations, etc. He moved out after the decorations were put up and since he was the only one who did anything around the house, the inflatables will be there until next Christmas.
*I know they just had a baby, but how long does it take for someone to pack away inflatable decorations?
Good heavens! :eek:
I still haven’t put up my tree for last Xmas… :o
Ah, well, there’s always next year. 
On the way home from my sister’s house last night, we spotted a pair of those spiral tree lawn decorations at the edge of someone’s yard and they were lit up. Pretty! Unfortunately, there was a fence in the way of the house so we didn’t get to see if the Christmas theme still extended inside.
My mom once left a xmas tree up until April.
It was an actual tree, too, not artificial.
This is but one small illustration of why my home cleaning approaches near-OCD levels today.
When we used to get a real tree, the thing was usually so dry by Christmas that we’d take it down as soon as we could just so we didn’t have to deal with the needles dropping everywhere. Now that we have an artificial tree, we take it down as soon as we can because the damn thing is too big around (or the living room is too small) and takes up about a fifth of our living room and we have to rearrange all the furniture just to get it to fit.
However, I do remember one year in college when a friend of mine dropped me off at home for Thanksgiving and was amazed that my dad already had the Christmas lights up outside. Uh, no dude, those are still up from last year.
Up until you said college kids, you could have been talking about me.
My excuse? Well, there is no good one really.
But hell, why we’re at it. Every weekend we’ve had something better to do… wedding out of town, birthdays, stuff like that.
I didn’t take it down, cause I’m not sure where he put the box. We upgraded to a prelit 7.5 foot tree this year, and the thing is a monster!
But, just in case… we did take it down.
Part of it is in the kitchen, the two bigger halves are on the floor in the living room. I can see out my window now.
I did take down my little aluminum tree in the kitchen, see that was my job. Take down the little one, and take care of all the decorations, which I did weeks ago. He was supposed to take care of the big tree.
Its a matter of principles you see.
And laziness, glorious laziness.
The Christmas wreath still hangs on the front of our house, in the apex of the front dormer, but only because there’s a snowdrift ass-deep to a 9-foot Irishman across the front yard, and I won’t get a ladder in there until June. Razorette demands that all Christmas stuff be put away on Dec. 27th. She’s Missus Santa until Christmas Day, then goes Grinch so fast it makes my head swim.
I still have mine up and I turn on the lights most evenings. I like it.
I’m right there with her (except the Missus Santa part). Christmas is OVAH! Move on!