Talkback: what date should your Christmas tree be up?

When is it Christmas o'clock at your house? Alex Brooks dives into the traditional - and not-so-traditional - rules around putting up your tree this Christmas.

What date does the tree go up in your house?

Traditions are free and easy when it comes to an Aussie Christmas tree, though some people are sticklers for the rules.

If it's rules that you like, then your tree should be up by the beginning of Advent, which begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas. This year, Advent begins on Sunday 3rd December 2023.

I worked with a Christmas obsessive once, who insisted the tree should be up by November 1 to allow for the full dopamine hit of an extended run-up to Christmas.

When I had a Dutch stepfather, he insisted the tree could only go up on Christmas Eve (he also told me Santa Claus was named Saint Nicholas and that Black Peter would come and fill my stocking with coal if I was naughty ...).

Some choose to follow the 12 days of Christmas, and put their tree up 12 days prior to the 25th of December.

The tradition of Christmas trees only arrived in our Anglo-Colonial world during the reign of Queen Victoria, when her German husband Prince Albert insisted on bringing the tradition of felling and decorating a pine tree to the royal palace.

In the early days, hanging the tree upside down was the done thing, mostly because small homes had hanging space but very little floorspace. As Bernd Brunner wrote in his book Inventing Christmas, it was often the poorer families of the 19th century that hung their Christmas trees from the rafters.

And when should the tree come down?

My grandmother insisted that leaving your Christmas tree up after New Years Day was bad luck.

Other traditionalists say the Christian tradition of Twelfth Night, the end of Christmas and the Eve of the Epiphany (Christian feast day), is the time to take down your Christmas tree and pack away your decorations again. In 2024, this will fall on January 6.

What's your take on the Christmas tree? Do you have yours up already?

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