Taking the tree down!

[Elsouth]

Is it wrong to consider taking the tree down tomorrow? When is everyone else doing it?? I think last year I did it just after Boxing Day. As the kids get older the presents seem to get bigger and I end up having to rearrange the whole room. Need that tree gone. Does that make me a grinch?

I was not being judgemental, I was asking a question

Yes, I understood that.

I was also curious as to why it happened that way - even as the mum of a young man who's severely autistic and who has multiple other difficulties. It interested me.

I read your post as critical - I don’t understand why you would question that she knows what’s best for her kids

I didn't find it critical and 26 years in what works for others still interests me.

I love my tree. It’s the best part of Christmas - far better than turkey and presents and all the stress that seems to be part of Christmas now. It goes up about a week before Christmas and will stay up until about 12th night. Nothing nicer after all the hullabaloo is over to relax with all my decorations collected over many years and the lights twinkling softly.

Fair enough. I’m being over sensitive and I apologise to cardi

Sorry if it hit a nerve Batteries - I genuinely wasn't bring critical. I work closely with a young woman recently diagnosed with ASC and I appreciate how difficult it can be and how things which seem really odd to outsiders can be the only work round.
Lindibop thanks - I'm glad I didn't come off as critical to everyone!

I love knowing that I have another week looking at this. No mess, not unclean - just very pretty.

Our local scouts do tree collections to raise funds and the only pick up days are tomorrow or Saturday so plan is to take the decorations down on Friday when dd is at my mums to be ready for the Saturday collection.

When I was young I remember hating it when the tree came down as it marked the end of Christmas but now I just want to get my relatively small living room back to normal - we’ve had ours up since first weekend in December.

Actually this just prompted me to check my collection slot and it’s actually 6th January they are collecting! Will still probably bring it down before New Years though but we’ll see

I’m a 12th nighters myself

1st jan here

Jan 6th, the Twelfth day of Christmas.

MN really is a great place for hearing how people unexpectedly do stuff totally different from you.

We put tree up at the end of term and take it down just before term starts / 12th night whichever is earlier. DH and my work shut down between Christmas and New year, and now DD1's does too. So the Christmas Period lasts around that week for us. We see family over this week.

It's really interesting to read how others view the build up as the festive time, coming to a climax on Christmas day, and then all over. Maybe that explains all the elves on shelves, and trips to ice rinks, and angst over visiting Santa 6 times etc I read about that we have never done.

Riding since when did Epiphany outrank Easter in the Christian calendar? Christ dying and being resurrected is the entire core belief. His birth was important, but not as much as his death.

(I’m not a believer but I’ve been involved in churches a long time, up until I gave up running a church toddler group a couple of years ago.)

Jaimx86 they look lovely. The tree in the foreground of your photo is very similar to my living room one except mine is snowy. My second tree is at the back of my house and has coloured lights and lots of colourful ornaments. I love looking at them.

I don't get sick of looking at them it just takes a long time to take them down and I can relax fully when it's done. I also like to go into the new year a fresh.

Trees are really nothing to do with Christmas if we’re talking proper Christmas. They only came to Britain in the last couple of hundred years. I imagine those sneering at us morally inferior slaves to consumerism on this thread would have been the ones whingeing about the true meaning of Christmas being lost when people started worshipping trees all those years ago.

Well mine's still up. I CBA to take it down today. Cat has knocked most of the baubles off the lower branches. I will probably do it tomorrow now.

I love Xmas. I always put my tree up on 1st December and take it down the day after my children go back to school. That way at least it still looks warm and Christmassy when they go back to school. Don’t forget Christians shouldn’t actually stop celebrating until epiphany which is 6th January but some carry on until February 2nd as churches do when Mary presented Jesus.

The point is, people who put their treee up in November or very early December are by their own admission on this thread, celebrating “the build up” which is advent, not Christmas. Do it if you like but don’t kid yourself that you’re celebrating Christmas, which runs from 25th December to 6th Jan. you’re celebrating advent, or a secular version of Christmas based around shopping and Santa, not the true period or meaning of Christmas.

Hi
Our tree always comes down on boxing day - been up since 1st - mean mummy lol. Just glad to get house back to normal now 😀

Trees are nothing to do with the true meaning of Christmas.

12th Night here!

Juliesaway - so now I’m not celebrating Christmas because I don’t keep my tree up to your timescale! Believe me, you are not the Christmas police. We celebrate Christmas in a lovely way with lots of special family traditions, one of which is the tree going up the day school breaks up and down on New Years Eve - to us that is the true days for celebrating Christmas. You just happen to use different days!

We celebrate Christmas to our own timescale and I couldn't care about somebody's pedantic ramblings of when it starts and ends.

NYE probably or NY day. Dc's are back at school on 2nd and it would be weird having it still up when back to normal routine