Another vote for after New Year’s Day.
Being Catholics really into the liturgical calendar, we put up our Christmas deco (including the tree) on the eve of the Nativity of Our Lord, aka December 24, and take everything down on Epiphany, January 6. Christmas Season is short. Advent is long – it includes the 4 Sundays before Christmas and all the weekdays between. Advent is sort of like Lent but not as penitential. Color is purple or blue-violet, you get an Advent Wreath with four candles and a lot of readings from Isaiah. It has extremely little resemblance to Commercial Christmas. Verging on Anti-Christmas. Many cultures don’t exchange presents until Epiphany – which is the day the Magi showed up with their presents.
It’s kind of hard to find a tree on Christmas Eve. We usually get one a week or ten days ahead and store it outside on the north side of the house.
There’s quite a bit of suffering to reflect on for Religious Christmas – Jesus being essentially a poor bastard born in a garage – plus the flight to Egypt and the Massacre of the Innocents. There’s no Santa or elves or reindeer or any of that shit. Saint Nicholas’ feast day is December 6.
Old Norwegian tradition held it to be either the January 6th, for the reasons mentioned before, or January 13th for reasons that are not so clear, but since the day is linked to a St. Knut, whose saint day was moved from January 7th to January 13th, I bet a time machine would find a bunch of people at the time of the move going “We’ve always toasted the end of Christmas on St. Knut’s day! We’re not stopping now due to some government edict!” (And yes, they were inconsequent in their rebellion against The Man! Or possibly just consequent in wanting as much partying as possible.)
The “holiday season” ends on Super Bowl Sunday. Seriously. When we were house hunting a few years back, our realtor told us that listings wouldn’t get serious until after SBS.
I would not describe our Savior as a “bastard”.
Born outside of wedlock. Meets the dictionary definition.
His parents were actually considered married under Jewish law at the time, in that the betrothal was considered a two part process of marriage, the wife not supposed to have relations with her husband until the final ceremony, but He would not have been considered by such under the laws of His culture.
Plus, it’s needlessly offensive.
Anything that sticks a needle in the eye of Sanitized Sentimental Jesus is needfully offensive in my book. If all I had to go on was the gooey-eyed white Jesus dear to so many, I would never have become a Christian.
Lent is my favorite season. That, and November, the Month of the Dead.
But (according to the stories) the father was a third party, not Mary’s husband. Thus, Jesus was born out of wedlock, just as he would have been had he been the product of Mary’s hypothetical dalliance with a local shepherd while Joseph was at work.
Christmas ends officially when Bill Maher is back from the holiday break. This year it’s January 19. (It begins officially after the last show of the season, which is generally the week before Thanksgiving.)
Of course it’s different in different religions. Some don’t consider Christmas officially over until Last Week Tonight with John Oliver is back, but that’s not until February 11 so this is obviously bullshit. 
I was raised by a Catholic with strong opinions on the proper times to put up and take down Christmas trees, and we almost always took our tree down on 1/7. She’s been gone these last two Christmases, but I did take the tree down on Sunday as is right and customary.
Our decorations came down yesterday, for the Baptism of the Lord. OK, it was a little late actually 
but Mom died on TBofL 1/10/10 so maybe we had that in the back of our heads.
“The liturgical season of Christmas begins with the vigil Masses on Christmas Eve and concludes on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord.”
The Baptism of the Lord 2018: Sunday, January 7, 2018 (transferred to Monday, January 8, in the United States and other countries where the celebration of Epiphany was transferred to Sunday, January 7)
This is also acceptable.
In Commercial Christmas the rule is, it starts as soon as we can make people start reflexively buying crap they don’t need, and ends when we stop being able to. Time to gear up for the Easter Bunny!
See post #12.
The Australian atheist christmas ends when you cut the last chunk of ham off the bone and present the bone to the dog.
Easter begins when you find the bone in the backyard and chuck it in the bin.
Yep, I was just answering the GQ about when Christmas ends, not 2018 in particular.