Well, Christmas this year was busy with my brother and his family visiting and my mother's situation, over and above the regular busy Christmas stuff. On January 2, my mother's last illness began. Then came her death and funeral and all the loose ends (I still haven't tied them all up).
I decided I hadn't really enjoyed my Christmas trees enough this Christmas (really, I hardly noticed them at all) because there had been other things on my mind. So I have not stressed about taking them down. I did take down the other decorations inside, but I left the trees up so I could enjoy them a little more.
So now, I'm finished enjoying the "shiny"Christmas tree that is in the "front front" room (as I call it), and I will finish taking it down today. However, I'm not finished enjoying my German tree. It will come down at the point I'm finished enjoying it.
One year I did leave a tree up all year long (back when we weren't using my front room), although without the decorations on it, and you can't dust Christmas trees. I'll not do that again. That was the Christmas tree with 50 strands of lights with 100 lights per strand (hand-wound by yours truly) and when the switch was flipped, lighting the tree required two different outlets on two different circuits or it would throw a breaker. It would warm the room like a heater or fire place. It was beautiful and I could not bear the thought of ever trying to do that again. So I left it up, enjoyed it one more Christmas and took it down. I'll never do that mega-lights again, either. It is all pre-lit trees for me from now on.
We also have most of our outside Christmas lights up and we turn them on every night. We do that often anyway--leave them up for a month or six weeks after Christmas--it kind of banishes the winter doldrums that follow Christmas.
We're not sure who makes the rules about Christmas decorating but we don't subscribe to them, anyway.
