Is your Christmas tree still up?

Took everything down last weekend.

I’d leave the tree up all year if it didn’t take up so much of our living room.

 

My grandfather used to wait until after my mom and her brothers went to bed on Christmas Eve to go buy a tree. He would tell the kids Santa brought the tree along with presents. So it was something they looked forward to each year.

What was really going on was my grandfather was as Scottish as they came. Instead of paying full freight for a tree, be would get to the lot right as it closed and offered 50 cents to take a tree they were about to throw out.

 

I can't put ours on the curb for pickup until tomorrow, so at the moment it still stands in the living room.

 

I broke mine down after the new year and put it in my green waste bin. I think we're supposed to get curb pickup but figured it was just as easy to chop the branches off and cut the trunk in thirds

 

10 minutes after I take mine down that area will be filled with toys from another area of the house I'll have to clean up daily. So it's staying as long as it's up to me to move it.

 

When I was a kid one year I had a ‘Charlie Brown’ tree in my room for close to a year. Needles everywhere.

 

Coming from a family of firemen, no real Christmas trees in my house.

 

I was a kid, no lights on the tree. Just decorations.

Must’ve been three foot tall.

 

We still have the lead tinsel my late father lovingly took off the tree each year strand by strand after it became illegal. But we don't use it. Also inherited strings of big build lights. Tested one a few years ago and each light was at about 400 degrees in three minutes. How my family and myself didn't die in a fire around 1961 escapes me.

 

Ours finally came down today. I would've been fine with leaving it up all year, but that idea was vetoed.

 

This thread made me feel so good about myself.
Last weekend we made a playdate for my daughter and one of her class friends and invited the parents to hang out (they're our age, we're trying to be social and get to know other parents - but not some of the WT types where I'm at). We had to clean the house for appearances (can't let people know we don't have a spotless house) and that meant the tree had to go. Hadn't watered it since Christmas, so we took that prickly SOB down and I dragged it outside to the woods and laid it to rest next to our previous three trees we've had since moving to the woods. Worst part was it was 10 degrees and the snow was calf high.
Had we not invited them over, it might have come down this weekend, but it'd probably still be standing.