We tend to throw boundaries and reason to the wind when we’re decorating for Christmas and include all themes, color schemes, and trends. When the Gump’s catalog comes out, featuring sparkly fruit in jewel tone colors this year, we add that to our decor but we don’t retire last year’s 16th Century tall anorexic St. Nicholases with beards that make them look like heroin addicts. Which means that for every year that you’re alive and an adult with a checking account of your own, the more Christmas decorations your house is filled with.
And more importantly, the more Christmas decorations you have to put away. It’s like a circus came to town the day after Thanksgiving and the performers decided to move into your house with all of their props and equipment, and you’re in charge of packing them up in January to move onto the next city. Which reminds me of the Circus Christmas theme decorations I bought one year.
The issue of when to take down the Christmas decorations is the perfect example of Americans’ overthinking and agonizing over things that don’t matter, not even a little bit. The Internet is full of the questions “When should I take down my Christmas decorations?” And I mean there are lots and lots of people typing that question into fields and waiting for someone to help them with the problem. I can’t understand how these people get their teeth brushed in the morning without advice on how vigorously to spit. I can imagine the Internet question answerers sitting there going, “Oh, I don’t know, how about whenever you effing feel like it? March 29, how about? Take down your decorations on March 29 and not a day earlier.”
One website offers suggestions as to when to take down your Christmas decorations so as to assure a fabulous new year. “Take your tree down on New Year’s Eve before the bells toll at midnight. Otherwise it’s said you’ll be dragging all your baggage and bad luck from 2014 to 2015.” There’s actually a Snopes entry debunking the rumor that if you don’t take down your tree by Dec. 31 you won’t make as much money as the guy in the cube next to yours in the coming year, and you’ll probably get a tumor.
Of course the procrastinators’ favorite take-down day is the Epiphany, because hardly anyone knows when that is, so if visitors say anything about your Christmas lights being up on Valentine’s Day, you can just say, “Well, you know, the Biblical King James Dead Sea scrolls Olde English traditional Magi Wise Men. . . Yeah, the Epiphany. That’s what we’re waiting for. Because we’re not fools, you know.”
It’s never too soon for me. Not that I don’t like my decorations. I love them. But as soon as the last gift is opened and the wrappings and rum bottles are in the garbage, I start to look around and plot how I can start the de-Christmasing of our house. Because it’s not a simple process. Putting the stuff away is far more complicated than getting it out. Ornaments expand from being out in the open and you won’t be able to fit them back into the same box they came out of. And then you have the decorations that hide when they see those bins come up from the basement. Of course there’s the obvious stuff – the tree, the dining room table centerpiece, the giant wreath, the Christmas village. But even in a triple sweep of the house, you’re going to forget either the front door mat or something that you stuck in the bathroom.
My decorations are technically still up. But they know their days are numbered. I’ve been eyeing those stockings hung by the chimney with care. I can see they’re trying to blend in. Yesterday I caught the holly embroidered guest towel halfway to the linen closet, hoping I would let it live in there during the summer. As if.
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Read more of Diane’s Just Humor Me columns here. Sign up for our weekly e-newsletter to get new blog post notifications. And if you like her blog, you’ll love her book, Home Sweet Homes: How Bundt Cakes, Bubble Wrap, and My Accent Helped Me Survive Nine Moves.