JK Decorations

[eloise_herisson]

David:

> I was always taught as a child that Christmas very definitely comes 
> to an end on January 6th.  I'm not sure if this was an English or a 
> Danish thing, or both.  

It's definitely a British thing, don't know about Danish. Well, 
actually, being Epiphany, I'm not sure that nationality as such comes 
into it: the church calendar dictates that it's the end of Christmas, 
so any church which follows the same calendar as the Roman/Anglican 
traditions will also see Jan 6th as the end of Christmas. Way back 
Twelfth Night, at the end of the season, was the night of the most 
riotous Christmas celebrations.

The tradition is definitely that it's bad luck to keep your 
decorations up past Twelfth Night (I should have had a *lot* of bad 
luck over the years), but there's also a tradition that you *should* 
keep one sprig of holly though most sources are vehement that Holly 
should not be introduced into the house before Christmas Eve and must 
be removed by Twelfth Night or else a misfortune will befall you for 
every leaf left in the house (shame about that bunch still in the 
living room!) 

The tendency here, as Ali said, is for things to creep earlier and 
earlier and I think that a lot of people are actually taking 
decorations down earlier as a result. I find it rather sad that 
people seem to celebrate Christmas in 'the run up to Christmas' as 
Advent is now known and think it's all over during the season of 
Christmas itself. Soon the whole thing will be over before Dec. 25th! 
I think it was Jan 6th that I saw the first Easter offerings in my 
local supermarket, the Lindt cholcolate reindeer being suddenly 
superseded by Lindt chocolate bunnies. 

<sigh>

I'm afraid I find the whole taking down thing a huge chore, which is 
one reason I'm usually late with it. This year, thank goodness, the 
children didn't go back to school until after Twelfth Night (they're 
usually back earlier than that) and they're old enough to help quite 
efficiently, so I set them to work and we blitzed all the decorations 
quite quickly (only a day late) before my son helped me to get all 
the boxes back up into the loft. Only 11 months to go until we get 
them out again. 

~Eloise