OK, I can understand procrastination. There are certain tasks I’ll put off. But, for the life of me, I can’t understand why anyone would still have their Christmas tree up at the end of January.
A friend of mine joked about it on facebook tonight and posted a picture of a relatively small tree that would probably take 30-45 minutes for one person to take down and put away. I looked out my windows and I can see a person in a neighboring building with the tree still up.
I understand leaving the tree up until Epiphany. I can understand if someone has been sick or out of town. I know taking the tree down is about as fun as scrubbing the bathroom, but I can’t imagine why anyone would let this task drag out for so long.
Reason #1: I live alone and can do anything I like.
I have two 8-foot pre-lit trees that get moved to window positions for the holidays. The rest of the year they occupy inconspicuous corners, so they never really get put away. I consider them to be large artificial house plants. I take the ornaments off because I enjoy decorating them differently every year.
As for my Christmas lights, I’m allowed to leave them on until the Iditarod, which starts the first Saturday in March. I learned this philosophy while visiting Anchorage, where lights are left on to combat the long winter night blues.
One of my neighbors still has some lights up outside (and others seem to leave them up all year, if not powered up; wonder how many still work the following Christmas, what with corrosion and all, since many lights aren’t waterproof).
Oh yeah, that neighbor I mentioned? They leave them on ALL YEAR (they did last year), if only plain white lights on one bush by the garage (for Christmas, they have like 10,000 lights all over their yard, including fake trees, reindeer, etc).
If I’m living alone and I get a tree, I’ll leave it up until it’s practically a fire hazard, as long as its needles are staying intact and it’s still taking in water. I remove all blatantly “christmas” ornaments and sort of redistribute the rest. It looks pretty. I had one that lasted until mid-February.
My Christmas tree (artificial) is still up. I was going to take it down last weekend but got a stomach virus and spent 3 days puking. Plus I like the lights. However, all my other decos have been taken down, along with the giant plastic snowman from the porch. We have no snow so I felt bad for him.
The tree came down, but the rest of our stuff is sitll up - it will come down this weekend. I’m talking about the stocking, the lighted garland going up the stairs, the umpteen dozen nativity sets we have - for some reason, everytime someone dies, we get their nativity set - I have more baby Jesus’ around here than a maternity ward in Bethlehem. Or something like that.
In any event, we didn’t take it all down because my son was finally able to come home after about a year and a half on leave and hasn’t the house decorated for Christmas in a couple years - he came in Tuesday, and is going back the day after tomorrow so we’ll take them down then. The lights my husband has strung up in the living room will probably stay up though - we have a very “different” living room than most people - our friends call it “The Emporium.” My husband was in charge of decorating one room in the house and he chose that. It’s grown on me. Took it ten years to DO so, but it’s grown on me.
Sort of guilty.
We took down the decorations and have them all in the den - but the boxes and boxes of stuff are still there.
Mostly because SO got very sick and putting all of that away, in the very small and cramped crawl space, is a two man job and I can’t do it alone.
Hope to get to it soon - but until then, at least it is sort of out of sight.
We have far too much crap for decorations and meant to have a garage sale before Christmas and get rid of 2/3 of it, but it got cold and we chickened out and didn’t do it. Regret that now.
I have a really beautiful 7-foot fake tree that has over 700 steady white lights, to which I add several hundred randomly blinking white lights. It’s in 3 sections, and I usually keep them in the basement. The two lower sections are quite heavy to shlep them up each year. Plus the additional lights are a pain in the ass to set up and take down every year. So this year I’m keeping the whole thing up and just moving it away from the window. I don’t have it plugged in, and I removed the ornaments.
Ditto this, except it finally came down this past weekend. This coming weekend I’ll finally break down and take in the ( deflated ) inflatables that are still hanging out in the yard.
I still have my Christmas cards up (I tape them to the closet door). They’re so nice and festive, and most of them feature pictures of my friends’ kids. I can’t take them down yet!
I wouldn’t mind taking the tree down a week or two after NYD, but my wife likes it, so we keep it up until Valentine’s day. We’re kind of atheist/agnostic, so the association with Christ and Epiphany and all that stuff isn’t a big deal to us. In fact, given that the idea of worshipping evergreens in wintertime seems to have non-Christian origins, it’s a little surprising that more people don’t keep their trees up longer.
We took ours down late but just about two weeks ago.
I do though still have one tree out of six lighted outside that I’ve left the lights on. It’s a palm tree by the pool in the backyard and easily seen from the living room. It really looks pretty and we’re having a party soon so I figured I’d leave them up until after that.
The other five trees and approximately 30 strands of lights (not counting the blanketed shrubs) are all down.
I leave mine decorated year round, but it’s stored in a closet upstairs. I love being able to just bring it down and plug it in, then unplug and take back upstairs when I’m ready.
I would have taken mine down during the week after Epiphany but my father, who had been gone to some friends’ house for a tree-trimming party, wanted to have those people over and have them see what our decorations look like. That’s been delayed so up they have stayed.
I may have to put my foot down this weekend. Of course traditionally Christmas extended through Feb 2 Candlemas/the Presentation of the Lord, but Sunday will have to be the end of it!
My cat made me get the ornaments off, but the tree is still there, albeit unplugged. And that little fucker still climbs it. And my outside lights are still mounted on the front of my house, but they are also unplugged. I am a single Dad with my sons M-F during school, I work a lot of hours, drink a lot of beer, and am lazy.
