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Indoor decorations and lights went up and on the day after Thanksgiving and came down January 1. The outside lights and decorations went up in October when the weather was nice and warm but did not get turned on until the day after Thanksgiving. Nothing outside will come down until it thaws out. The tree tops in the pots are now frozen pretty hard, so they will stay put until spring. The lights on the bushes and trees outside are covered in snow and ice and look SO PRETTY when turned on, so I'll keep flipping that switch for a while. The lights strung on the house will be up until Easter when my kids will take them down.
December 25 is Day 1 of Christmas and goes for 12 days.
If someone does not like my Christmas lights, they can soon think of them as Mardi Gras lights.
If someone does not like that idea, too bad, so sad.
I was late getting my tree up so I hate to take it down so soon...and it looks so pretty lit up while it's still getting dark so early...one year I left it up until Valentine's day! Lots of neighbors still putting their outside lights on too.
Our tree goes up just before Thanksgiving. For some reason, the tree really brightens up this old place. I have so many ornaments, some at least 50 years old. So............drum role.....the trimmings outside and stockings are gone.........but the tree is still shining. I started to take the tree down (artificial with a zillion lights) it started to snow and I changed my mind. Who knows, I will probably do the deed next week.
January 17th? I like this! I love the story of the animals.
I'd love to plan a Twelfth Night party for next year!
I just Googled it, and the Wiki entry says it is the 6th, not the 17th. Say it ain't so!
It ain't so. Wiki is talking about Twelfth Night - I referred to OLD Twelfth Night, which is January 17 (most years) by the old calendar, twelve nights after Old Christmas Eve, therefore the Twelfth Night of (Old) Christmas.
Fruit trees, particularly apple trees, but others are fine if you happen to have a pear or cherry or peach or plum tree instead, traditionally get wassailed, with much fanfare, in England (particularly in Somerset) after dark on January 17. Singing, bell-ringing, toasting the tree with cider, aka scrumpy, poured both on tree roots and down throats, shooting guns through the tree's branches to scare off the bad spirits (popguns work just fine), toasting the robins (the good spirits of the tree, of course), placing bits of cider-soaked toast in the tree (placed by the youngest child present, lifted high by a parent or other sturdy adult), dancing in a ring around the tree, and of course, enjoying plenty of cider by the wassailers are all part of the custom(s). Look up "apple tree wassailing" for more info. There are several good wassail songs that are appropriate, a number of which appear on the "Christmas Revels" recordings.
Then there is the crowning the king or queen of the revels, title determined by the finding of a bean (or special charm) in the Old Twelfth Night Cake (apple cake is very appropriate). The one-night ruler gets to boss everyone else around and make special demands, such as "Refill my cup of cider", or "Bring me more cake", or "Sing a song", etc. The ruler can wear whatever kind of crown and mantel you can find or make. A yard of red or purple or gold (or green, for that matter) cloth works well - I used an old gold smallish tablecloth for last year's queen and draped an unholstered living room chair for her "throne".
You still have time, so get going and host that Old Twelfth Night party! I can almost guarantee that your friends and neighbors will never have seen anything like it previously. Ask them to wear red, green, gold, or purple - traditional Old Twelfth Night colors - and to bring small bells, to add to the merriment. Play traditional English folk music or English Christmas carols, and encourage people to sing along, if so inclined (print out the lyrics ahead of time). Incorporate the colors in your decorations, and use a lot of polished apples here and there to keep the focus on the wassailing. You can float smaller apples in your punchbowl of cider, too.
Kinda makes me wish I myself were hosting an Old Twelfth Night party again this year, but I think I'll make it an every-two-year event. Maybe some of my friends or neighbors will pick up the slack - just too busy around here this year to do it myself.
Forgot to note that the small bells get rung just prior to the wassailing of the fruit trees, to scare off the bad spirits. Might be a good substitute for the traditional firing of guns through the branches, especially in suburbia...(as noted above, popguns are another good substitute, if you can find them...).
Even though my neighbors across the street still keep their Xmas lights on, I took mine down today!
I'll be curious to see how long my neighbors keep their lights on!
Finally!! The tree is down. Sad to see it go. Well, in 10 months, we will brighten up the old place again!
I need a divider, to take the place of the tree, the tree was between the dining room and living room at an angle, and lights showed up in mirrors.................so, see you next season, "the Lord willing and the creeks don't rise"................That saying is a little too true, this year.
It would have been interesting for everyone who posted about when they dismantle their decorations to have noted when they put them up and lit them. I'd bet that many early starters were also early finishers but that there is also a contingent who love to get them up early and leave them there a long time.
We start putting ours up on Thanksgiving - this year it took five days to get the ouside stuff up and running because we had a much more complex display. Then we were waiting on one last piece of equipment to "go live" so we ended up not turning on the outside lights until December 1.
Outside stuff got taken down in two days over New Year's weekend, and was done January 3.
As for the inside, we took two days to put everything up, beginning December 5, and just took down the last few things this past weekend, January 10.
I'm currently in a studio apartment, but management still has a tree up and lit in our lobby. Growing up we kept our Christmas lights until New Year's Day. It's kind of depressing to me when they're gone by December 26th. It's still cold and dark and the kids are out of school. The 26th until New Year's Day is like this holiday limbo. I like the idea of the all the lights welcoming the new year.
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