Christmas season, Christmas lights

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Everything is typically down by December 27th. This year, it was all down and packed away on the 26th. In our family growing up, we were always told how tacky it was to keep your lights up past New Years and Lord help you if the tree was still standing at that point! I love my Christmas decorations, tree and lights - but when it’s over, it’s over. I need my house back.
 
Here in our litle ole town in the Midwest everyone took down their lights January 7.
Everyone which is a small number LOL
Maybe it was a city ordinance?
Mary.:D:D
 
JackieMom said:
Everything is typically down by December 27th. This year, it was all down and packed away on the 26th. In our family growing up, we were always told how tacky it was to keep your lights up past New Years and Lord help you if the tree was still standing at that point! I love my Christmas decorations, tree and lights - but when it’s over, it’s over. I need my house back.
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“When it’s over, it’s over.” True … but since Christmas only starts around about sun-down on December 24th and lasts at least until January 5th, when exactly is “it over”?

Full disclosure: This has been a pet peeve of mine for most of my 55 years. We are subjected to Christmas decorations, songs, and celebrations even before Advent (a pestilential time) begins. Once Christmas morning is over people are ready to stop the celebrations. Eh? That makes no sense to me.
I guess that a large part of what I do at Christmas time is to try to counter act the secular celebrations with the actual celebration of God being born a man. Thus I try to follow the Church’s calendar. (Especially the old calendar wherein Epiphany is January 6, not the nearest Sunday.)
 
They come down when someone gets around to it. That has always been the “tradition” in my family. 🙂 We don’t pay too much attention to dates. It’s usually “When is your next day off so we can get the decorations down (or up)?”

I didn’t put up any lights or decorations this year as we were out of town for the holidays. It’s nice not to have to take them down for once. I have a friend who leaves the outside lights up all year round, they just don’t turn them on except for Christmas.😃 Looks kind of weird, but it’s not a blight on the neighborhood or anything. 🤷
 
There are three “layers” of Christmas.
  1. The feast itself has an octave, which lasts eight days, with the Octave Day of the Nativity being the first of January. In the U.S., this day is also a holy day of obligation.
  2. The season lasts through the feast of the Baptism of Our Lord, which is on the Sunday after the Epiphany. (In the EF it is fixed on 13 January.)
  3. The forty days of the Christmas cycle last until Candlemas, which is the feast of the Presentation of Our Lord and the Purification of Our Lady, on 2 February. On this day liturgical and devotional candles to be used throughout church year are blessed, along with candles to be carried by the people in a procession that is similar to Palm Sunday. Many churches leave up their creches until this day, even though other Christmas decorations were taken down weeks earlier.
 
maltmom said:
Growing up in New Orleans, decorations were taken down on Jan 6th. That is also the day we’d have our first King Cake of the Carnival season.
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King Cake - love it! Over here in Mobile (where Mardi Gras in the US originated!) we have our first Mardi Gras-related Ball next Saturday. No rest for the weary this year.
 
We were ask at our Parrish to at least leave up some decorations until the 13th.
My tree is still up
 
Plasnick said:
Basic question: when does the Christmas season officially end? I’ve always thought it was on the Epiphany, but at Mass this evening they said that the season runs through the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord next week. However, if I’m not mistaken, the week after that is the SECOND Sunday in Ordinary Time. What’s up with that?

Also, I’m taking an informal poll–when do you stop turning on your Christmas lights? Merry Christmas everyone.
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The Twelve Days of Christmas from Dec 25 through Jan 5.

In the Latin Church Ordinary Time begins on the Monday after the first Sunday after January 6.

In the Byzantine Catholic Church (USA), January 7 is the Synaxis of Saint John the Baptist, and then on the Sunday after Theophany, the Gospel is on the arrest of John the Baptist, and the beginning of the Lord’s preaching ministry. Finally, January 14 is the leave-taking, or last post-festive day, of the Theophany.

The entire season is shifted 13 days later when using the Julian Calendar.

At our Byzantine parish we take the lights and decoration down on January 12 this year.
 
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