When does your Christmas Tree go up?

Tree (rooted one), greenery and all our old Christmas cards (now send Christmas letters by email) go up the weekend before Christmas Day and come down January 2nd, ready for a nice clean start to the year! That covers us for Christmas week parties and get togethers. Then we plant the tree in the garden if the ground is not too frozen. Simples!

We usually do it on Christmas Eve, but the next time we put up a Christmas tree will be December 2013. As we are currently living surrounded by pots of paint, lining paper and half a dozen different size ladders, not to mention a temporary cat-proof fence woven in and out of the balusters to prevent the senile Fishpaste from plummeting to her death, Christmas decorations seem somehow de trop.

Ours usually goes up the weekend before Christmas although I believe it was always supposed to be unlucky to bring any greenery into the house before Christmas Eve. I can remember walking down to the local park with my Dad and a pram to collect holly branches that the council would be cuuting down. The thing I always miss now is candles on the tree. At tea time the front room would be opened and the candles on the tree would be lighted and the whole room would be full of the smell of pine resin made so much stronger by the heat of the candles. Fairy lights just don't do it for me.

My husband and I have always had different ideas of when the tree should go up. He says it should be put up on Christmas Eve and taken down on Twelfth Night. Personally, I prefer to put it up about a week before Christmas and would take it down before New Year if it was up to me. We compromise and it goes up a week before Christmas and comes down at Twelfth Night!

Usually the weekend before Christmas, but we might do it weekend before that this year, as the day is early in the week. (Not sure if that makes sense!)

The weekend before Christmas usually. Far too much to do on Christmas Eve to put up the tree.

When the children were at school they always broke up on a Wednesday lunchtime so we had a tradition of having fish and chips for lunch and decorating the tree in the afternoon. We had a great greengrocer who would leave the tree on the patio as he passed on his way from the wholesalers. The trees in those days came in a trunk off-cut so it stood on the patio looking ripe for decorating.

Today we bought an artificial tree which will, hopefully, pass muster with the daughters! The boys are not so bothered. If we can't stand it, we'll put it away until we are REALLY old and REALLY can't cope with a real one - I hate the mess when we take it down . We checked in the garden centre and a Nordmann Fir would cost £70 this year for our normal size and the equivalent artificial one was £200.

We also have one of those 'paper trees' that John Lewis were selling last year and which seem to be all over the place now. That stands on the desk in the hall looking designery as opposed to the main tree which looks as though every tatty bauble in the world has been thrown at it. We also have one in the 'playroom' which the 3 girls claimed as their own and which has the most appalling purple things on it.

I love it.

Ours always went up on Dec 5th when we had my DD's birthday party - it was part of the party - all the children would make decorations and add them to the tree.

Our decorations are far from tasteful - all the things the children made over the years and woe betide me if I left any off. There is one known as the "wicker turd" (just don't ask!!) and if that is left off then trouble ensues.

I once tried to suggest that we might have a theme (red and silver for instance) and was told very clearly by my cockney SIL that there was a theme - "It is a Christmas feme!"

This year it will go up when my OH is well enough to go into the loft to fetch it - it is a very nice artificial one that I bought online one January when they were very cheap. We just can't manage a real one any more. My GS loves getting it out of its box and helping me to fit it together.

On the subject of over-the-top lights on houses I simply love them! - they make me smile as I drive by and my children would have loved it when they were little. I understand all the logical arguments about electricity etc. - but they are such fun!!!

Also always have stacks of candles round the place , lite, makes it even more Christmassy if that is possible .

We decorated yesterday , put the tree up this morning .

Looks great , I love Christmas , but decorations and tree are up makes it even more Christmassy [festive smile]

Our middle daughter has a birthday on the 11th , so nothing chrismassy before then even though she is now 31 ! Out tree goes up the weekend before Christmas ( any sooner and I would be fed up with it by the day). All decorations come down on 12th night.I love Christmas and all the trimmings but I like it to be short and sweet.

We have our own Christmas traditions which the family all love and would be upset by the slightest change. Now the grandchildren can start to enjoy it all too.

Our tree goes up after our son's birthday as we always wanted him to feel that it was his day and nothing to do with Christmas. It has ornaments they made when they were young and things we have bought as mementos of various events and places which make for a very happy time when decorating. It is always a real traditional tree which is as big as the house will take as we love everything about Christmas.

Shouldn't we have a Christmas emoticon?

I've just spoken to my mother who told me about an arrangement she has with a neighbour. Said neighbour loves to decorate her house inside and out for the entire month of December, so much so that she has to decant a fair amount of lamps, photos & paintings for the duration. As my mother has plenty of spare room in her house, neighbour's stuff fills up mother's box room in exchange for neighbour looking after mother's house while she visits my sister for christmas.

janeainsworth when I lived in NY most people had real trees which were decorated beautifully and sometimes at great expense. They don't celebrate Boxing Day [we did in Canada] so everyone goes back to work then. They know nothing about the 12th night tradition either so we were always horrified to see trees already out for the garbage man to collect. Xmas dinner often isn't turkey as that is the Thanksgiving meal, we went to some Italian friends one Xmas and had pasta - delicious but not to us very Xmasy. Xmas crackers and Xmas pudding also not on the menu. I think that's why we frequently tried to go to relatives in Ottawa to get 'our type' of Xmas. When there we nearly always had snow and our relatives would drive us around in the evening to see some of the houses which were beautifully lit up.

I have a few tasteful decorations,a beautiful garland for the fireplace and a tiny tree about 8 inches tall.
They go up when the Christmas spirit hits me, probably a week before the day.
They come down on New Years Day.

I am a bit 'bah humbug' but I always weaken in the end

As a child the tree went up the weekend before Christmas when my father was around to get it and bring it home in the car and get the lights on and working.

We did this for years but we found that as trees and decorations went up earlier and earlier in December getting a decent tree, or in our case, two decent trees, one for the bay window at the front and one for the living room became more and more difficult the closer you got to Christmas. We now buy our tree about 10 days before Christmas.

Ever since DH bought a tree from a garden centre that didnt pass muster with DD we have made a bit of an event of it. We go out to a Christmas Tree Farm among rolling woody landscape, wander around a huge Christmas tree lot and having bought the trees and tied them onto the roof of the car go to a very nice pub and have an excellent lunch. The tree then stays outside in the cool until the weekend before Christmas when it goes up.

I was always amused by the totally different ways in which my daughters decorated their trees. One would be very stylish, with carefully placed ornaments in limited colours, perhaps red and gold. The other would allow the children to drape the tree with their home made decorations, dolls, teddies, chocolate coins (which never lasted more than a day). I am not sure what it said about their personalities.
This will be only the second Christmas that I have spent apart from my daughters and grandchildren, but at least my sister will be with her grandchildren, as her son has invited us both up to Scotland for a few days.
I was in NZ last Christmas day - we had, of course, a bbq. This year I am not going out until mid February as grand-daughter's fiance's parent are going to be staying. I have learnt to share my family with all the other families that are involved.

Sadly, I won't be seeing my other daughter in Yorkshire, although I will be visiting her daughter and grandchildren while I am in England.

There's a house in this town which is always 'dressed up' for Christmas. They take donations for charity, but why not save on the electricity used for this display and just donate the money saved to charity? Am I a Mrs Scrooge? Bah, humbug!

I like to do this sometime in the week before the 25th, whenever I can gather enough greenery & fir cones. It all came down after the children had gone to bed on the 6th so that the next morning they came downstairs to see my DDs birthday decorations

Gally, your daughter's friend's house sounds like a sort of nightmare film! You know - all the grinning, squeaking toys with evil expressions striding about...and singing...oh dear!

Now we have downsized from the big family house we had when the DCs where all at home the trimmings have become those well loved ones that they made whilst growing up and special ones that I have collected over the years,each one brings back it's own memory when it's time to decorate the tree.

Usually around Dec 10th, comes down Jan 6th. No trimmings, apart from a couple of pieces of tinsel, and a few Christmas ornaments.

mine will go up two weeks before .only because of the grandchildren .it will come down on the 2nd .

When I was a child the tree usually went up on Christmas Eve, then I went to boarding school and it went up the day after I got home - usually about the 21st. I'm not having a tree this year - no point really as I will be with the family for Christmas and anyway, I really don't feel too Christmassy for obvious reasons.

DD2 in Oz told me yesterday that her children feel very put out as they are the only ones in the whole of North Curl Curl, or possibly the 'whole wide world' with no decorations up yet! Her friend decorates the house, literally from top to bottom and outside - a tree in every room, with dozens of presents already placed underneath, and every kind of clockwork/electrical device known to man; trains running from room to room, Santa HoHo'ing in every corner, sweets and lollies in dishes on every available surface, cacaphonic carols being sung from Wise Men and Angels alike, in fact a Winter Wonderland in 36 degrees, topped out with a life-sized Santa on the non-existant chimney - and all this on 30th November - her husband even takes 2 days off work to assemble this magnificent display! No wonder her children are so hyped up by the 25th that they can't cope. Daughter is putting her foot down and they have to wait until the 15th before so much as a snowflake is stuck to a window - as she says, in that heat the tree will probably be dead by Christmas Day anyway

wisewoman my eldest son also has a birthday on the 15th so we will put the tree up on that Sunday the 16th he has always had his parties followed by the tree going up the next day.
We also have birthdays on 23rd,27th and 31st December so a busy time for us and excited DGCs.