So When Do We Take Down Our Christmas Decorations?

Monday, January 6th. Time to celebrate Little Christmas. Wait, what?

Such a difficult day for everyone going back to work. If you were lucky enough you didn't have to work much last week and got to slowly transition back to the work week today. Everyone's New Years hangover has hopefully gone away and we can all go back to looking forward to summer. The Christmas season is officially over but the question still remains, when do we take down our Christmas decorations?

Of course we want to keep them up until the last minute to try to squeeze out as much of the Christmas spirit as possible, but when is that last minute? Second weekend in January? First weekend after Christmas? Dare I say, anytime in February!? I asked this same question to my roommates the other night and my roommate Dan gave me a very interesting response.

Allow me to introduce to you, Little Christmas. 

"I am absolutely hammered on whiskey spiked egg nog"

Yup, Little Christmas.

Whoa, Dave? Double Christmas? More gifts? When does it end? Calm down and let me break it down.

Little Christmas is the traditional name for January 6th in Ireland, although it seems that the rest of the world refers to it as the Feast of the Epiphany. Not to bore you too much with the semantics of it but hundreds of years ago, Christmas in some countries was celebrated on January 6th as the official birth of Jesus. In 1500 AD, some Churches were still celebrating Christmas on December 25th like we do today, while others celebrated on January 6th. For those that celebrated on December 25th, January 6th marked the day that Christmas is officially over.

But Dave, when do the people who celebrate Christmas on Jan 6th take down their decorations? Get real. It's 2013. No one does that anymore.

So there you have it. January 6th marks the official day that Christmas is over and it's time to take down all the decorations. Tell you parents. Tell your friends. Judge everyone you know when you go to their house tomorrow and the tree is still up. Those people are basically living in the past and embarrassing themselves.

Who am I kidding, here is the fireplace in my house as of tonight...

Those stockings will be there until February. Bet on it. 

Interestingly enough, Little Christmas also goes by another name: Women's Christmas.

"I can't wait for this to kick in so I can twerk everyones faces off"

Women's Christmas is named due to the fact that if revolves all around women. WHAT!? So not only did you spend millions of dollars on the women that you love in you life on Christmas, they get an entirely separate day completely for them 11 days later. Total nightmare with Valentines Day right around the corner.

Really gives this all new meaning now...