My outdoor lights came down the day after Christmas, it was more to do with an approaching snow storm than not wanting them up longer. My brother took his down last weekend, claiming the bad weather for the delay, but said new year’s eve was the last night he turned them on. After dinner, I had to make a run to a local Home Depot for a new water supply line for my hot water tank. This and the hot water supply hose to the washer both sprung leaks in the past couple days. On my way home from HD I saw at least 8 houses still lit up with lights, a couple had pretty spectacular displays. In the past I have seen a few folks keep the lights on well into January but why so many now? The only thing I can figure is a family member serving in Iraq or other points overseas and they want to keep the holiday spirit going till the person comes home. Any other ideas why?
Well, it’s cold out, so who wants to spend a couple hours outdoors doing something non-crucial? And many people like to have lights up through New Years. And some people celebrate Orthodox Christmas in January. And if your lights are controlled by the same switch you use for the porch light, it’s everything or nothing. Some people just forget…after all, you are inside and don’t see the lights. And it’s only the 12th! Trees are still up!
I think the bigger question is why were you in such a hurry to take them down (not just turn them off-take them down!) approaching snowstorm not withstanding? Don’t you keep them lit thru New Years? The day after seems like such a waste…why put them up at all?
The saddest Christmas sight I’ve seen was the house that had the tree out on the curb at 5pm Christmas Day. We hadn’t even eaten dinner yet! I know there was probably some good reason, like maybe they were leaving town the next morning and didn’t want a dry tree in the house, but come on! Leave the tree behind the garage then till the next week’s pick-up! It just was such a sad sight!
oh, and I forgot…the mall I work in, and the downtown area, are undecorating today. Lots of people on holiday like to look at the lights, and they are not all done visiting and sightseeing by Christmas Day.
I leave my lights up, as well as other decorations, until Russian Christmas (this past January 7). Usually, the first weekend after that is spent taking everything down and putting it away.
[FONT=Tahoma]Why? Because the darkest, dreariest days of Winter are ahead of us, and we need some lights. I’d keep my Christmas treeup year=round, if I had the room!Just think…between New Year’s and St. Patrick’s day, we have no realholidays…except Valentine’s Day and Washington’s?Lincoln’s Birthdays! Bah, humbug!
I don’t have outdorr lights, but our livingroom/dining room has a couple strands of lights going around near the ceiling. Since we were not in the apartment for 3 weeks around Christmas and New Year’s, part of why they’re still up is that we want to enjoy them a bit longer. Also, every year we have a dinner before Christmas break with a couple of friends, but this year it didn’t work out since a couple people were ill. Since it’s supposedly a pre-Christmas dinner, the Christmas lights are staying up until then - tentatively scheduled for January 24th. We haven’t been turning them on every night, though.
And also, we are just lazy. That probably explains the above two reasons 
The end of the Christmas season, religiously speaking, is Epiphany, so I declare that you may leave your lights up until then. After Epiphany, however, all lights must come down. Which means about a week ago.
I have lights in my window and spiraled on my ceiling because I like to decorate with Xmas lights.
Tho I may have to take them down if half the strand keeps burning out. I got two extra strands so I’d have spare lights (100 clear and 100 blue spares), and they’re already half gone. Bastards.
Can you get Xmas lights anywhere after Xmas?
Not around here. That’s why I stock up during the after-Christmas sales
Plus, I always find out at Christmas that the lights I packed away from the previous year have somehow stopped working. I don’t know how they manage to do that whilst sitting in my garage, but they do. Cheap after-Christmas lights are in order for then, too.
And FTR, I too decorate with Christmas lights year-round, but only white. The actual Christmas decorations came down the day before Epiphany, though, because I was leaving town the following day.
I’ve got a friend who tells me that one day, late 1960s, when he was a little boy in Mississippi, playing with a pal, they went to the pal’s house to get some toys, and there in the middle of the pal’s livingroom was the resplendently decorated, lit Christmas tree – and by the way, it was the middle of June.
I live in rural Virginia at the moment, and I’ll see houses decorated and lit all through the late winter into spring. And some people around here do leave their houselights up all year round, but unlit, I suppose to keep from having to do the chore every winter.
The only time I ever saw a lit Christmas tree that ought never have been lit at all was at this same friend’s mum’s house one year – she’d bought a white artificial tree and put nothing on it but red lights and red balls. The corner of her living room looked like a traffic accident…
We take ours down on 12th Night.
We take ours down on 12th Night.
We take ours down on 12th Night.
Aww. I like the lights. I cheer for the people who keep them up well into January. When I’m jogging around in the cold dark, they’re the cheeriest thing I can see. I say leave’em up until the days get longer, and the sun quits setting so darn early.
I’ve seen this a couple of times in the nearby yupscale neighborhood. (You really ought to listen to Christine Lavin’s The Runaway Christmas Tree.)
(Another vote for March 17 as the end of the Christmas season–or, at least, the taking down of the tree.)
This being America, where you can do what you choose as regards such customs, whatever you want to do is fine, and nobody has any ground to criticize anyone else for choosing differently.
However, the origin of decorating for Christmas being founded in old English (Anglican church) tradition, if you’re interested in knowing what’s the “right” way to handle matters according to that, here’s the scoop:
One should decorate on the Friday or Saturday preceding Advent Sunday, to have the decorations up throughout the season of Advent. (This will ordinarily – six years out of seven) be the two days immediately after Thanksgiving.) The lights remain up through the season of Advent – the four Sundays preceding Christmas Day, and the weekdays following them until Christmas Day, and through the Twelve Days of Christmas, taking them down after Epiphany (January 6). A variation on this since electric lighting calls for leaving them up but without lights running until Candlemas (i.e., February 2, Groundhog Day), when they are lit one last time to commemorate the Dedication of Christ in the Temple and the Purification of Mary, and then taken down.
If you include a crêche in your decorations, the Wise Men, the Shepherds, the Angels, and Mary, Joseph, and the Baby Jesus are omitted when it is first erected, leaving it with just the animals. On Christmas Eve, all but the first of these are added, with the youngest child who can be trusted to place the figurines having the honor of putting them up, with the Baby Jesus added to the manger last. The Wise Men get added on Epiphany – which commemorates their visit to the Holy Family anyway.
No big huhu about this, but that’s the tradition. “The Christmas Season” as the period from shortly after Hallowe’en until Christmas Day and then stop cold is an invention of modern retailing, not the original way it was done. Christmas Day starts the Christmas Season; it’s not its end.
(And, of course, none of this is in any way intended to say that atheists, agnostics, Jews, etc., are in any way obliged to comply with the above – just that if you do it at all, this is the original and IMHO right way to do it.)
There’s about an equal number of homes on my street that go for the full blown Other outdoor decorations as there are Christmas.
It’s sorta funny seeing a house still spooked out with witches and bats and orange lights next to a green, red and white spectacle, then a month later we switch to red and white lights with cupids and hearts next to the Christmas ones. Rather like they’re all competing with each other to decide which holiday the rest of us should be thinking about.
Or maybe they had one of those happens-all-too-often family fights while trying to decide where the tree should go…
I have traditionally taken them down on January 6th (Epiphany and all). I actually told off my mother one year for taking them down early.
They’re still up on my house because they are frozen there until, in all likelihood, April or May.
I have, however, unplugged them.