Christmas Decorations

[smileeb]

  I hope this is not one of those neighborhoods where Christmas decorations stay up year around. 

[T6]

we were talking about that here 

some people leave their decoration until january 15 but most people remove it the 6 but lots of people let the decoration in from of their houses the whole year, lazy to put a stair and remove them

the problem with that is that those decorations, specially electrical installations won't survive a year out there so you are wasting money and letting others know that you are lazy!

most people just remove this things the first day of the year because they have this decoration since october!

[jaydot]

i'll put it on the 'to do' list, but there's such an awful lot of clearing up to do after all the parties.....

[j-retired]

I prefer to get them out of the way asap - that way reduces the chances of having to repair something. It also reduces the chance of the cats strangling themselves, or the dogs playing tug 'o war. (2 border collies and 2 cats is a lethal mixture!)

j

[bones113]

where I live a lot of folks leave them upfor the mardi gras season. They just replace the christmas theme with the carnival theme. It's a tradition here.

[Crow]

Here, in January 6 we share/eat a bread roll named Rosca de Reyes http://www.dfinitivo.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/rosca-de-reyes.jpg  , those who find a little plastic boy figure  http://sermaestrohoy.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/rosca.jpg (don't ask me what does he have in his hands  ) have to pay for the tamales and champurrado in a party on February 2 (Dia de la Candelaria), that day the nacimiento http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Nativity_tree.jpg is taked off (finally  )

[rudge]

I will remove my outside lights as soon as it's above freezing. My tree comes down as soon as my wife decides to do it.    (joking! , I help. I bring her leftover eggnog while she does it)

[Riki]

The tradition is up the 24th, down the 5th. No earlier, no later. These days many will ask, what is tradition?

[Wildman]

Here its, up (finished) on Thanksgiving day (after dinner)
Down on the 1st day of January.......

[hornerm]

I don't put up Christmas decorations. Just some red bow and pine leafes.

[blackbird]

When I was a child we had two distinct traditions in Finland. My Finnish speaking countrymen took down their decorations at Epiphany, on the 6th of January, we who belonged to the Swedish minority waited a week and took them down at what had once been called Knut's Mass, on the 13th of January.

Epiphany may of course be seen as either the Twelfth Day after Christmas or as the Thirteenth Day of Christmas. But in Finnish it is the End of Christmas, "Loppiainen", a term derived from the Finnish word for "end".

But why Knut's Mass? Well, it seems that the patron saint of Denmark, King Canute (Knud) IV decreed that Christmas be celebrated for twenty days. And how did that become part of our tradition? God knows.

Nowadays the ups and downs of Christmas decorations depend entirely on what larger shops and department stores think makes commercial sense....

[Riki]

Nowadays the ups and downs of Christmas decorations depend entirely on what larger shops and department stores think makes commercial sense....

Exactly, commercialisation has spoilt it all and nowadays many don't even know what they are celebrating. Good excuse to party, drink and abuse the system.