Decommissioning the Tree

We still have out Christmas tree up.  Is that a problem?  Are we clinging on to the holiday that was a little over two weeks ago?  What is the acceptable time frame for leaving it up and taking it down?  There are a couple of things to consider.

The main thing to consider is whether or not the tree is real.  My wife and I both grew up with real trees at Christmas time.  The main issue, of course, are the needles.  You can only deal with falling needles and bare looking branches for so long before you can't stand it.  The nice thing about having a fake tree is only dealing with falling needles when the pets chew or swat at them.  I should say that, they do fall off when we take the tree down as well.  Just not as much.  Having a fake tree, we are not in any kind of rush to take it down because we don't have the needle falling off issue.  Plus, this year we put it up kinda late so we want to get our time's worth out of it.

I'm sure there are people that put their trees up the day after thanksgiving that are eager to take it down the day after Christmas.  And of course, because it's been up for over a goddamn month.  I don't ever remember having our tree up before the month of December as a kid and we flat out refuse to do so as adults now.  Same goes with the music.  If you don't put your tree up in November, you won't be sick of it by the end of December.  Normally, we have our tree up in the middle of December and it's back in the box in the middle of January.  So about a month. 

There is always this big build up to Christmas, I don't understand why people wouldn't want to keep their tree up as long as possible.  It's always a great time of year.  Everyone is happy and nice to each other.  Why wouldn't you want to expand that a little bit longer into January?