‘𝑰𝒕 𝒍𝒐𝒐𝒌𝒔 𝒍𝒊𝒌𝒆 𝑪𝒉𝒓𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒎𝒂𝒔 𝒗𝒐𝒎𝒊𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒐𝒏 𝒊𝒕’: 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒇𝒂𝒎𝒊𝒍𝒊𝒆𝒔 𝒂𝒕 𝒘𝒂𝒓 𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝒅𝒆𝒄𝒐𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒊𝒓 𝒉𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒔

Grubbly moaning, one and all. I greet you well.

I've just returned home from yet another - mercifully brief - stay in hospital. Went in for one thing, and they found another.

The details would be too tedious to relate, but to cut a long story short a lung X-ray revealed that my left lung, or what's left of it, was slowly collapsing, though I actually felt very well. And without further ado I was taken, kicking and screaming, into custody.

They plunged the biggest needle I've ever seen into my chest. More X-rays, more lung function tests, and I was pronounced fit as a fiddle (I've always wondered how the health of fiddles is monitored. There can't be much feedback).

So I'm out, and ready for my annual gripe about why some folk feel it necessary to deck out their houses with Christmas paraphernalia the moment the last Christmas ends.

Now this business of draping houses in lights and Father Christmases is something for which I hold the United States - that's you! - entirely responsible. All those 80s Christmas films and television programmes which made it to our shores seem to be the origin of the mania, aided and abetted by those newly minted cable and satellite shopping channels which began pushing the stuff sometime in May.

Before that our streets were quiet, dark and wintry. You never even saw Christmas trees twinkling in people's homes until a week before The Day at the earliest.

The tradition in our house, and for a lot of other older folks, is that decorations don't go up until Christmas Eve, that ceremony accompanied by drinks and nibbles, and afterwards a night at the pub. The decorations stay up until January 6th, 12th Night. They must be removed then or - as every English housewife will tell you - you'll have bad luck for the rest of the year. So if you're too lazy to take them down, you'll have no cause to complain if your left-foot falls of and your wife runs off with a vacuum salesman. No point chasing after them - you won't get very far without a left-foot.

Before my unexpected sojourn in hospital I was driving home with Her Indoors, past house after house lit up like - well, like Christmas trees.

"Aren't they good?" said Her Indoors.

I could have got 15 years for what I was thinking. 20, if the judge was in a bad mood because his foot had fallen off and his wife had run off with a vacuum salesman.

(Picture below - South London home of loonies Andrew and Roz Woodall.)

Paywalled piece from today's Daily Telegraph:

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𝐅𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐬𝐥𝐞𝐞𝐩-𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐛𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐠𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐬𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐦𝐞𝐧 𝐥𝐞𝐟𝐭 𝐮𝐩 𝐢𝐧 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡, 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐚𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐧 – 𝐨𝐫 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐠

by Sarah Rodrigues

In all of the rows around Christmas – and let’s be honest, there are many – one of the most divisive is The Great Question of Timing. That is – when do the decorations go up? And when should they come down?

As someone with a December birthday, I’ve long been accustomed to my “big day” being overshadowed by the birth of a particular baby in a stable, so when one of my children was born in early December, I made it a family rule that the tree was not to go up until after his birthday. My other children, gagging for the festive fun to begin, have been less than impressed by this over the years.

Still, even without the birthday to and fro, I always wince when I see Instagram flooded with seasonal decor in November. And it seems that the landlords of Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida have similar views to me: last month, the base made headlines when its residents were reminded of community regulations that forbid “holiday decorations” to be put up outside of their “respective months and not any sooner than 30 days before the given holiday”.

“If you currently have Yuletide decor present on the outside of your home”, the memo received by residents continued, “please remove it and reinstall it in accordance with your community guidelines”.

The rule, outlined in the notice, only permits Christmas lights to be lit after Thanksgiving (ie, the fourth Thursday in November), and to stay up until the third week in January, and to only be on from 6pm until 11pm each night.

But wait – what? The third week of January? Everybody knows that it’s bad luck to keep decorations up beyond January 6 – don’t they?

Perhaps not. “My neighbours tend to put theirs up at the end of November, which wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t then find it impossible to take them down again,” grumbles Paul*, 77, of the New Forest. “They’re often still up in March and sometimes even beyond. This year, I asked them if they were planning on celebrating Christmas in July. It was even worse because they had one of those giant inflatable snowmen that practically blocked out the three hours of daylight I got in the depths of winter, and which then pooled in a deflated puddle all over the front garden from February onwards. It looked bloody awful.”

Andrew and Roz Woodall, however, are on the other side of the decoration fence. They actually start their display in mid-November due to popular demand – and it stays up until the middle of January. But they’re mindful of the lights twinkling wildly into other people’s windows, so they are turned off at 10pm sharp. They’ve been making their home in Downham, South London, a Christmas sensation for around 19 years now, adding new elements each season.

“My father passed away last year, so we didn’t do the exterior decorations,” says Andrew, standing next to a sleigh, which he’s been considerate enough to place a step next to, for anyone wanting to wander into their garden and take a photo. “This year, when we put everything up, we had people knocking to say ‘Oh, we’re so relieved. We thought that perhaps you weren’t going to do it any more.’”

The task of decorating the house, inside and out, takes around three days, Andrew says. There are Christmas trees in almost every room and, opening a door to a living area, the room bursts into light and colour as he commands, “Alexa! Do Christmas.” In the front porch, mechanised villages and wonderlands are set in motion when the doorbell rings; it’s not uncommon, he says, for complete strangers to come up to the front door and press their noses to the glass, just to see this happen.

“We used to have four huskies and every Christmas Eve and Boxing Day, I’d take them out for a walk dressed as Santa,” he says. “It used to take about four hours, I’d be stopped so often.”

Although the response is overwhelmingly positive (it helps that Andrew’s mother lives next door), there are some dissenters: their children. Now aged 30, 27 and 19, they roll their eyes at the excessive displays. They say “oh no, not again – it’s so embarrassing. It’s only November!” Andrew tells me. “Why so much?”

Decoration-fanatic Maxine*, also from South London, similarly unleashes the festive mayhem for two months, but she is less concerned about spreading cheer among her neighbours. Every year, from mid-November until mid-January, her house is a carnival of flashing lights, tinsel, an inflatable Santa and reindeer on the roof, and another blow-up in the front garden (last year it was a Gingerbread Man). She proudly says a neighbour once told her that her home, “looked like Christmas had vomited on it.”

Maxine’s solution is to calmly put a collection box out the front marked “For Charity”. “What can they say?” she chuckles. “I love everything about Christmas: it’s my house, my garden and if people want to be miserable, well, they can’t say much when it’s for a good cause, can they?”

She is, however, a little cagey when asked what the cause in question is, saying vaguely, “it changes, depending.”

Even where neighbours’ tastes in exterior decor are fairly similar, there’s still room for sniping. “We always have lights – in very similar quantities to our neighbour – at the front of our house,” says Jackie*, 43, of Glasgow, “but ours are coloured and his are white. Every year, without fail, he makes snide comments about his looking better, and more ‘properly Christmassy.’ He always races to get his up before us, as well – it’s such bizarre behaviour.”

Retailers don’t help, with many flogging their Hallowe’en, Bonfire Night and Christmas wares, simultaneously, from about mid-September. In the US, they have to factor in Thanksgiving too. So you can understand why the missive in Florida was entitled “One holiday at a time”.

There’s also the fact of the clocks going back, with the darker evenings summoning in that cosy – or, alternatively, miserable – feeling: both of which can lead to conflicting views over festive sparkle.

“I find the whole festive period quite claustrophobic,” says John, 54, of East London. “The dark afternoons, everyone cooped up inside, people coming in and out, all of the coats in the hallways… We live in a London terrace, not a stately home, and the tree just starts to feel like this huge, hulking presence in the corner of the room. I don’t want it up any longer than necessary – but my wife is very much of the ‘Oh but it’s Christmas!’ mentality. Christmas is one day – why do we have to drag it out?”

For Lotte Stacey, 33, of Cambridge, there’s a very good reason for making the season last as long as possible, and her tree – or trees, as there’s an additional toddler-sized one for her son – is up by November 15th.

“Christmas isn’t always the happiest time for people, so I think it’s really important to find the joy in the little moments,” she says. “My stepdad passed away from a rare terminal disease, pulmonary fibrosis, on New Year’s Eve when my baby was 10 weeks old. This time of year can be really difficult for me and my family, but I’m determined to create new associations with the festive season, so my tree gets decorated, my lights go up and we start the festivities early. I know that as we edge towards New Year’s, things will start to feel a little heavy so why not bring the joy forward a bit?”

“I’m also so blessed to have my toddler running around, overwhelmed with excitement, this year. After multiple miscarriages and IVF, if I could bottle up the sound of those tiny feet running round the Christmas tree and have it all year round, I would. I’ve waited many years for this moment, so I’m going to enjoy every second of it I can.”

“I know that what people do in their own homes is their business, but it does make it tricky when you’ve got young children,” says Charlotte, 35, from Nottingham. “When my son comes home saying ‘Luca has his tree up, where’s ours?’ and so on, I don’t want to be made to feel like a spoilsport because of other parents. But nor do I want the excitement of Christmas too soon – it takes all of the fun and anticipation out of it.”

She prefers to put the decorations up on December 1 – “at the same time as we open the first day of the Advent calendar,” she says. “Isn’t that just common sense, as much as anything else?”

Given that Advent officially begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas (which this year would have been November 30), she has a point. It’s even better if she takes them down on or before January 5th, when the 12 Days of Christmas officially come to an end. But anything featuring the actual Nativity should be left to the last minute.

“Anything before December 24 is Adventide, which is different from Christmas: this begins after dark on Christmas Eve, which is when, strictly speaking, the earliest that anything to do with the nativity and Jesus should make an appearance,” says Rupert Wesson of etiquette experts Debrett’s.

Yet for other types of decorations, he’s surprisingly relaxed in his perspective. “Winter’s a dark and dreary time, so what better way to brighten things up than with a few thousand megawatts of illumination?” he shrugged. “What’s the harm? Likewise for the inflatable Christmas figures – kids love them.”

However, in this day and age, he notes, “life is all about compromise. If you must start early, do wait at least until Armistice Day before decorating anything, and perhaps start small. For example, with a wreath that’s primarily autumnal, allowing you to work up to a glittering grand finale in time for the big day.”

Mini squash and turkey feathers? A marvellous option for those living on air force bases in Florida – and indeed, for anyone with a yen to decorate.