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Still Holding On

January 20th, 2016

I admit, my Christmas tree stays up until long into January. Since we travel to Ohio during Thanksgiving and the beginning of December, usually our tree is put up a little later.
Christmas tree 1
I’m always reluctant to chuck it out the door when it’s still going strong. I do watch for dryness and needles on the floor, as soon as that happens it’s in the chicken run. Until that happens, it stays in the living room, bathing our long, dark nights in the gold glow of the big old fashioned lights. I think this little tree still has another week of life or so in it. I have only spotted one or two needles on the floors.

When do you take down your tree?

11 Comments to “Still Holding On”
  1. Robin Follette on January 20, 2016 at 7:10 am

    I think it was January 8 before I took it down, and that was still early. It wasn’t shedding sprills and showed no signs of starting to dry. I have birch trees with white lights in its place. I think next year I’ll dig up a 3′ tree, pot it and bring it in for the winter so I can leave it up.

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  2. bonnie knox on January 20, 2016 at 9:30 am

    I reserve the right to leave it up till January 6th. This year it came down on the 8th of January. (I was ready to have it gone before then, but that’s when I got around to it.)

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  3. Jodiana on January 20, 2016 at 10:43 am

    I finally took my tree down yesterday. I was very late getting it up this year and just couldn’t bring myself to take it down any sooner. I would have left it up even longer but I had a 4 day weekend and knew I had better get on it while I had the chance.

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  4. Deb on January 20, 2016 at 11:49 am

    We have 7 rescue cats raoming the house so a tree is a no-no. I use the top of an old artificial tree on top of the entertainment center my dad made. Hubby made a base from an old tabletop so it wedges tightly.. I was late getting stuff up and jsut yesterday got all the decors put away. Loved seeing the living room lit up by lights. We really have no place for a tree so it works fine and is easy to put up and take down each year.

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    • Susy on January 20, 2016 at 7:17 pm

      My four cats don’t seem to bother the tree at all, besides the occasional nap underneath it.

      Reply to Susy's comment

  5. mist on January 20, 2016 at 11:55 am

    We put ours up the weekend of Thanksgiving and took it down the day after Christmas. We were going out of town that next week and I didn’t want to deal with it when we returned. If we weren’t going out of town I would have kept it up through New Years weekend.

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  6. Jennifer Fisk on January 20, 2016 at 1:10 pm

    I put mine up the weekend after Thanksgiving and take it down about a week after New Years but sometimes later. I love having it on from 5-7 in the morning while it is still very dark out and on again at 4 when it is once again dark. Now that it is still light at 5pm I’ll probably take my candles out of the windows this weekend.

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  7. Pat in Nebraska on January 20, 2016 at 2:39 pm

    We use a pre-lite artificial tree so no needles. And fortunately our current cat has no interest in any of the decorations. Our tree stays up until well into January to help chase the long nights away. Also our holiday season lasts until the first weekend in January when our social group has Twelfth Night every year. This year it took a week to take the tree and decorations down and put away as we had everything out of the storage closet to clean it and sorting/condensing the accumulation of ‘stuff’ for a spring rummage sale this year.

    Several years ago when I lost my job in January my sister said we’d leave the tree up for luck until I found work. The next October when I was finally found a job we decided to just leave it up for the holiday so that tree was there 14 months. That January the tree came down the day after our 12th night celebration.

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  8. Nebraska Dave on January 20, 2016 at 4:20 pm

    Susie, my tree usually stays up for a couple weeks after Christmas but this year it came down just a week after Christmas. I put it up right after Thanksgiving because of my grandson so it was up for a good month. My tree is a fake tree so there was no time limit on the life of the tree before becoming a hazard. The Christmas season seems to get more and more hectic as Bradley gets older. The presents require more money, time, and interaction. I wouldn’t have it any other way and truly enjoy having him live with me.

    Have a great late Christmas tree day.

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  9. karen gimson on January 20, 2016 at 4:22 pm

    Ours came down on Twelfth Night and it’s gone on top of our bug hotel. We just recently went on a trip to London Zoo and were intrigued to see that virtually every enclosure had a recycled Christmas tree dangling in it, as “environment enrichment.” We stood for ages watching the lynx babies climbing all over the tree. A good re-cycling idea.

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  10. Maria on January 20, 2016 at 9:39 pm

    Our tree is still up as well. I finally took the ornaments off last week, but everything looked so bare, I didn’t have the heart to take the lights off or the tree down. We still light it most nights (it’s fun to watch baby’s face light up when it comes on!) – I’m thinking this might become a new tradition to keep the dark, cold days of January a little more festive.

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This is a daily journal of my efforts to cultivate a more simple life, through local eating, gardening and so many other things. We used to live in a small suburban neighborhood Ohio but moved to 153 acres in Liberty, Maine in 2012.

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