We cut our our tree the friday after Thanksgiving and put up the outside decorations that weekend. The inside decorating takes us right up to the week before when we bring the tree inside and decorate it.
When do we put up the decorations? It depends on how busy Mr2U is work-wise and how much he’s had to drink on any given day. He’s started moving the furniture already for the Christmas tree, but I think he’s done that more to amuse himself and the dog versus any real desire to start decorating. He is, however, moving boxes around and hanging out in the attic these days, so he may be getting started early this year. I HATE it when he has no work going on and is just HOME during the day…I never know what I’m going to come home to.
Oh, and nonacetone, don’t let these cretins spoil your Thanskgiving - just tell them that if they don’t like the holiday festivities, they don’t have to eat any of the holiday food and then hand them a menu from Domino’s or something. 
Oh no! Nonacetone, I’m now afraid you’re my aunt, talking about my parents. Except I don’t think my parents ever said anything out loud…
If you are my aunt, I love your Christmas decorations at Thanksgiving and you keep on keepin’ on. You go girl!
Anyway: I put mine up shortly after Thanksgiving.
In my family we usually put up the tree and decorations after Thanksgiving and I think they come down early January. But what I really came in to say is that several of my neighbors put up Christmas lights last week! Right after Halloween! Most of these neighbors are from India or that part of the world so I’m wondering if that is customary there. Anybody know?
Maybe I can call Dell support and ask them? 
Maybe those were Diwali (Indian festival of lights) lights.
It is Diwali. Diwali was November 1st, and they don’t have traditional deepas here and anyway those are fire hazards. So we use Western lights. But I keep my Diwali decorations indoors.
Christmas stuff goes up Thanksgiving weekend. I luuuuurve Christmas decorations. I am as strong an atheist as they come but I luuuuuuurve a good secular Christmas. (Why not? Celebrating winter solstice is good and dandy but since it’s been appropriated, I’ll take Christmas). It goes down the first weekend after New Year’s Day.
I thought it be something like that. Thanks for the answers!
Happy Diwali everyone! (or something) 
My decorations stay up year to year. They are clear and too high to notice when not lit.
Outside lights, that is. Inside I don’t decorate as I’m always gone at Christmas to the family homestead.
I put up my lights a couple of nights ago… however, it was because at the beginning of October I put up some Halloween lights and needed to take them down. I live in an apartment and getting to the window requires moving a ton of furniture around, so in the interest of saving time I went ahead and put up the Xmas lights while everything was out of the way. They are not plugged in and have white cords so they’re not really noticable. I intend to turn them on after Thanksgiving if I can hold out that long.
I got a new artificial tree this year because I wanted a white one. It’s been sitting in its box in the bottom of my closet, and depending on my work schedule I’ll probably put it up sometime around or after Thanksgiving. No one lives here except me and (practically) the bf, so there isn’t anyone to be scandalized if it goes up a bit early. I won’t be having guests over until closer to Xmas anyway.
Devout atheist here, by the way, but Xmas is one of the few things I enjoyed during my childhood and I’ve always been very fond of it. There are quite a few little kids in my apartment complex too, and I know they like the decorations, so I put out lights for them as much as for myself. This year I’m trying to rearrange stuff so I can put the tree in front of the window.
I’m glad you said this, because I’m not usually one to complain about how early everything goes up, but here the way things look outside in the shopping centres and in stores you’d swear it was the first of December already. It really jumped out at me. All I can figure is that I think retail business has been pretty sluggish all year, and they’re trying to get people in the mood to spend money sooner – hoping early Xmas decorations will perhaps extend the holiday shopping season. I know one of the radio programs I listened to mentioned a poll that people don’t plan on spending as much on Xmas this year because of the energy prices, etc. It felt like quiet desperation.
In one’s own house, there’s no wrong time to put up Christmas decorations. Do what makes you happy. I’m horrified your relatives have the nerve to mention it repeatedly. Maybe once would be a foot-in-mouth accident, but year after year?
I personally like to have Thanksgiving decorations for Thanksgiving. One thing that annoys me a little about retail stores is that it seems more difficult to find Thanksgiving decorations that I like (they can’t involve scarecrows, I find them … well, scary) amid all the Christmas decorations on the shelves, but I’m almost a complete convert to online shopping anyway.
In a perfect world, my Christmas decorations would go up on the first day of Advent, with the exception of the Christmas tree which goes up the weekend before Christmas. We like a real tree (plus we have no place to store an artificial tree during the rest of the year) and putting it up the weekend before Christmas means it lasts pretty well until Epiphany.
In the real world, due to my work schedule I often need to use the days off after Thanksgiving to get the bulk of the decorating done. I just try not to notice them until Advent.
Our cats don’t allow us to have a tree. I do a little knick-knack decorating about a week before.
My mother-in-law is all stressed out because she threw out her back before she finished decorating her whole house. Yup. It’s the Christmas bomb over there for two and a half months. No wonder I don’t decorate. I’m burned out on it by next week.
I use an artificial tree. It’s a beautiful, huge, 9’ Douglas Pine. I don’t put up the tree until a day or so before Thanksgiving. All the outside lights are not up yet, but they will be by the time the weekend is done. They don’t get lit until December, though. The tree WILL be lit for Thanksgiving dinner. It just gives the place a festive atmosphere, I think. I always get many compliments on it…other than the set of relatives that openly detest it. That makes it ALL worthwhile! 
My SO goes apeshit with after-Christmas decoration sales. Every year our house gets filled up more and more. We start the Friday after Thanksgiving, and it takes us two full days - so we are lucky if I can sit down on Sunday night.
I am not joking when I say he was hinting about addressing the Christmas cards tomorrow (Veteran’s Day) so we could get that out of the way.
But regarding the OP - hey, it is YOUR house. My ex-sister-in-law used to start decorating beginning of October and had some form of Christmas tree in every room of her house, yes - including the bathrooms.
So if you want to have a Thanksgiving dinner with Christmas decorations in the background, go for it! Most people start putting them up the next day anyway, so what is the big deal?
Of course, you could be evil about it. Set the table so those who complain have their backs to the tree and put a big poster of a turkey on the wall for them to look at, and for the others, they can look at the tree in the background.
Ooooh, DMark…Good idea with the turkey poster. Yeah…I like that. I’m SURE I can work a picture/poster into the festivities somehow. :dubious: I’ll be sure to seat them where they have a nice view of it. Hmmm…
: : wanders off to see what sort of snarky turkey display I can find : :
When I was small my Mom and Dad put the tree up on Xmas eve and took it down
on New Year’s Day. The premise was that Santa and his elves brought the tree and
decorated it… When I got a little older it was put up a few days earlier and the story
changed to them helping Santa. Of my first half dozen or so Xmases they bought
potted trees, blue spruce, and planted them after the holidays. This was in the early
40’s and I last saw those trees, there were 3-4 remaining, in the mid 80’s. As I recall
the tallest was at least 60’.
From a practical point we lived in a rural area and the danger of fire was a
consideration in only having the tree indoors for a short period. Actually I think many
people overlook this today. I was in the trucking business and hauled trees from
Oregon to So. Cal. for a number of years. These trees were cut, from a few hours up
to several days, before I loaded them. They were then on the sellers lot for for
several days before being sold and often people will leave them outside for another
day or so before bringing them in to decorate. Statistically Xmas tree fires are very
rare, but the risk is still there. Make sure you cut about 2 inches from the base of the
trunk before bringing it into the house. Keep the base submerged in water and check
it every day or two, it will consume a surprising amount in the first day or two. Don’t leave the lights on when the tree is unattended and keep the tree separated from other heat sources.
beethoven’s birthday. down after epiphany.
December 1st, at the earliest. it has to be december. By Xmas, I am so sick of them (I’m a minimalist) I rip them all down immediately after opening the presents Xmas morning.
:mad: :rolleyes: (xmas colors)
My SO absolutely detests taking part in my holiday festivites, so I always do it alone (sadly). Christmas will come when I actually get around to putting things up after Thanksgiving.
For Halloween my apartment was the scariest damn place in the whole complex, as was stated by numerous fightened children. I can imagine that with the amount of lights I have ready to go up, I’ll be the brightest house in the complex for Christmas as well.
Okay, so this post is nearly a year old but I felt inclined to resurrect it after having been witness over the last several days to what I can only consider (at least in my experience) a new low in the world of premature holiday decorating. A house across the street from mine has had its Christmas lights lit up for the last two weeks. You heard it right … they have been on since the middle of October. Like the majority, I’m sure, I am absolutely all for the practice of holiday decorations and don’t find any of it offensive, but you’ll parden my outburst … HALLOWEEN WAS TWO FUCKING WEEKS OUT WHEN THESE LIGHTS FIRST WENT ON. I am about this close to going over there in the dead of night with a wire cutters and snipping the cord. If they repair it, I’ll go snip it again in ten more places. Has anyone seen it go this far yet and if so, what the blue fuck is wrong with people these days? These are the same type of folks who leave nativity scenes up year round. I get it, you’re into your faith so much that you need to let everyone else know … for at least a good three months of any given year.
I’m willing to concede that since Christianity is the predominant religion in America, the statistical certainty is that there are more fringe-zealot-kook-nutjobs in that faith who will take it one step too far … but decorating for Christmas the minute the leaves start turning orange? I know I’ve turned this into a bit of a rant and that I’m making judgments about a distinct minority of Christians, but I can’t see how this kind of behavior can be anything but damaging to the sanctity of Christmas and Jesus of Nazareth. I hang decorations for Hanukkah when the time is appropriate, but you won’t see me erecting monuments to Baby Moses floating down the Nile, or a plasticky diarama of the victory of the Maccabees in Jerusalem to match the nativity scene straight out of Bethlehem just a few houses down … which may or may not remain up all year round, I might add. It’s one thing for retailers to start gearing up for the season with marketing and store displays because merchandise needs to be promoted and sold in time for the holiday season, but what is it that compels the sort of brazen, ostentatious need for folks to put their faith up on display long before or long after the holiday ever comes to pass?
In the words of fellow Jew Lewis Black: “You Christians have created a holiday that has become a beast which cannot be fed. Every year, Christmas gets longer and longer and longer, and you don’t care, do you? You just take more and more of the calendar for yourself. It’s unbelievable. How long does it take you people to shop?! It’s beyond belief. It’s insane. When I was a kid, Halloween was Halloween, and Santa wasn’t poking his ASS into it.”
My whacky MIL has been done with decorating for two weeks. She’ll take them down right after superbowl.
My father does it a few days before Christmas and it’s down by Jan. 2nd.
I have a couple tabletop items I toss about in the week or two before Christmas, but it’s all contained in one small box…no biggie.
I used to work with a woman who set her holiday meal table the day after Thanksgiving. What a drag to have to dismantle it and wash a month’s worth of dust off the plates and goblets before you can serve Christmas dinner on them!!