When Do You Take Your Christmas Tree Down?

When Do You Take Your Christmas Tree Down?

When I was growing up, we bought our Christmas tree the weekend before Christmas and took it down the weekend after.

Christmas Tree

Long after I had moved out of my parents’ house, they moved to an artificial tree.

A white tree with silver balls, all the same color and size, it never really felt like they had a tree after that.

Christmas Celebrates Family

With my children now long gone from the house, I understand why my mother went to an artificial tree.

It’s more fun to decorate a tree when it is part of a family ritual.

But, we moved out to the country 12 years ago. We are surrounded by woods.

I vowed we would never buy another tree as long as we lived here.

Even if the pine trees are scraggly, misshapen cedars, they smell fresh when you bring them into the house. It is easy to hang balls in their open branches.

And, there is something satisfying about walking out into your own woods, picking a tree and chopping it down.

Instead of a one-hour excursion to a tree lot with a tree you know has been cut for a month, we step outside in the cool December air.

We settle on one of the trees scouted a few months before.

Fifteen minutes later we bring in the freshly-cut tree, already in our own stand.

The Downside of a Fresh Tree

So, the cutting and putting up is fast.

But, perhaps because of that, I let the tree linger in our living room. No needles fall for weeks.

It extends the season with its flashing lights, reflected in the tinsel, into January.

The week or so after our return from Georgia, when we had still one more family celebration that might have been an excuse to keep the tree, is now long past.

Memories of Christmases Past

Perhaps it is the memory of the dwarf orange tree that was my Christmas tree when my husband was in Vietnam.

My mother found a tabletop tree, already lighted and decorated, ready out-of-the-box, that she sent to my husband for his desk in the Army computer room he oversaw.

My parents and my in-laws lived three hours and one hour away, respectively, that year. They both had huge family trees.

My son and I spent part of Christmas with each family.

So, it didn’t really seem right to have still another one in our home. Besides, pennies were tight.

Someone had given me a dwarf orange tree as a gift months before. My black thumb had already started to show itself in the tree’s yellow leaves.

But, when I wrapped blinking white Christmas lights around it, the tree was newly happy.

I left them on until Valentine’s Day.

By then, even I had to admit my son’s second Christmas was simply going to be without his father.

Valentine’s Day is coming. It’s time to take the tree down.

Take the poll below and tell us when you take your Christmas tree down.

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To you and many happy Christmases with your grandchildren.

Carol Covin, Granny-Guru