KIRO NEWSRADIO OPINION

Curley: Is it okay to keep your Christmas tree up until March?

Dec 28, 2022, 10:33 AM | Updated: 11:35 am

christmas tree...

Christmas trees are discarded as part of Mulchfest in Washington Square Park on December 27, 2022 in New York City. The New York City Department of Sanitation and GreeNYC turn Christmas trees into wood chips and mulch that is scattered around the city and reused leaving limited waste. (Photo by Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images)

(Photo by Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images)

For many in the post-holiday season, the lingering question remains: At what point should I take down my Christmas tree? Is it the day after Christmas? Is it January 1st?

According to an article from The Atlantic, you should keep your tree up until March to keep the holiday spirit alive.

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“We so desperately need that light in our lives these days,” Jami Warner, the executive director of the American Christmas Tree Association said in the article. “And people are realizing that having them around is a wonderful, uplifting thing.”

On the John Curley and Sheri Elliker Show, host John and guest host Greg Tomlin discussed when you should actually take your Christmas tree down, and naturally, they both disagreed with having the tree up until spring.

“How would anybody think it’s a good idea to keep that thing around until March 8, you must be talking about artificial trees,” Curley said. “There’s no way you’re gonna have an old Douglas fir there on the corner just waiting to blow up.”

Each of the hosts shared their Christmas tree disposal procedures and generally agreed that their trees should come down sometime between Christmas Day and the first week of the New Year.

“Normally [the tree] goes up around the 30th of November,” Curley said. “Then on Christmas night, we take all the decorations off and my friend Heath comes over, and we normally saw all the limbs off and throw them in the fire, or take all the ornaments off and drag the tree outside and set it ablaze.”

“I’ve developed strict guidelines over many years of doing this. And it might be an unpopular opinion, but I advocate for waiting till the actual month of December 1,” Tomlin said. “Okay, I’ll bring out the stepladder and start putting up the lights, I always do a terrible job, and I never make sure to check if all of them work or not. Never fails year after year. But I say January 2, I’ll allow people to keep up the tree and the lights till January 2.”

The main reason why people enjoy having their holiday decorations up for so long is that it provides a little bit of that holiday magic, even in the darkest time of the year.

“I mean, without a doubt, the reason for the season remains the birth of Christ, but I can’t help but think that winter is by far the most depressing time in the 12-month span,” Tomlin said. “It’s bleak, it’s dark, it’s bereft of hope, And so, conveniently the holiday season gets placed right in the middle of it. So all of us don’t go into existential despair during this time of year.”

You can listen to Greg and John’s whole discussion about Christmas trees here:

John Curley on KIRO Newsradio 97.3 FM
  • listen to tom and curleyTune in to KIRO Newsradio weekdays at 3pm for The John Curley Show.

John Curley

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Curley: Is it okay to keep your Christmas tree up until March?