AS a new year dawns, Christmas looks a little worse for wear.
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The pine tree is well past its prime despite sitting in a metal milk can full of water.
You’ve stopped re-hanging the decorations that slip off branches or are dislodged by the dog’s tail doing her high-five, morning house rounds.
“Morning!” she’ll bark.
“It’s been absolutely ages and ages and hours – at least eight – since I last licked your shins!” as she takes out six ornaments on low-lying branches in one fell swoop.
There is a growing pile of decorations on the floor among the remaining gifts for those you’ve yet to catch up with.
Christmas cards are starting to curl up their toes and fly off the mantle in the slightest breeze.
Advent candles are almost reduced to piles of wax.
It begs the question: When do Christmas decorations come down?
Growing up Christmas decorations in my home would have been well and truly gone by New Year.
My family didn’t like pine needles dropping onto the carpet or the countless insects that hitched a ride inside to the air conditioned lounge room on an enormous farm-grown pine tree.
Since moving out of home I’ve generally packed away Christmas decorations on January 6.
Yet others don’t get around to it until much later, if at all.
I guess it saves on all that time and bother stringing up Christmas lights year after year.
However, if you Google long and hard enough there is a theory to suit everyone’s preferred way of wrapping up the festive season.
According to The Sun – UK edition: “Your Christmas tree should be down by the 12th day of Christmas, which always falls on January 6.”
Turns out this date marks the Epiphany – the day when the Three Wise Men visited baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem. The Epiphany is the official end of the festive season.
Each year I look forward to the Epiphany when I regain access to my sewing supplies and general-junk cupboard, obscured by the Christmas tree.
No sooner have we put up the tree than I remember the trouble I had the year before getting my hands on a needle and thread to sew elastic on to ballet shoes. Same again this year. It’s become a proper ritual now to go dumpster diving for sewing supplies while someone holds up the Christmas tree.
Another superstition is that you should take your Christmas tree down before the bell tolls for midnight on New Year's Eve.
If you don't meet this deadline, you're said to be dragging your baggage into the new year. Luckily I’m not a superstitious person because I have already missed the baggage boat.
Finally, a letter writer to The Guardian spoke of a children's book which stated that if you did not take the Christmas decorations down on January 6, you must then leave them up until Candlemas Day, February 2.
It then claimed that if after that date, so much as a berry or leaf was left, “the goblins can get through the keyhole and spill the milk, crack the china and let the rats and mice into the larder”.
In the interests of avoiding any run-ins with goblins, I’m aiming for January 6.
This year I will have an epiphany of my own right before we put up the Christmas tree in mid-December.
I will move the sewing box within reach.