When is too early to put up your Christmas tree?

The annual debate over the correct date to put up a Christmas tree is proving as spiky as the festive firs themselves.

In Norway – home of the spruce – it’s traditional to wait till 23 December to decorate your tree but, in Britain, the day for trimming and tinselling appears to be getting earlier and earlier, with some Christmas enthusiasts getting the baubles out as early as August. As a nation, we are also leaving our halls decked long after the festive season, turning the traditional 12 days of Christmas into something closer to 12 weeks.

‘Big Treekend’

“Pine politics” have become “increasingly spicy”, said Helen Coffey in The Independent. The first weekend of December is known as “The Big Treekend” because that’s when 33% of Brits put up their Christmas tree but, this year, that’s not until 6-7 December, so many households have gone early and opted for 30 November – which was, to be fair, the first Sunday of Advent.

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I should probably “commend their restraint”. I was “aghast” to see some people putting up trees “from the first week of November”. In some houses, “the second the Halloween decorations came down”, it was time for “wreaths, tinsel and gaudy front-garden displays of light-up Santas and gurning elves” to take their place.

When I see houses “bedecked with twinkling lights” too early in the year, I feel “faintly appalled”, said Allison Pearson in The Telegraph. Is this craze for ever-earlier decorating “a sign of national moral decline or an inability to defer pleasure”? It’s much more “magical” to decorate your house when there are “only a few days to go, the anticipation pricking the sweetness” like a splash of sherry in a trifle.

Traditional grumbling

Of all the many rows about Christmas, “one of the most divisive is The Great Question of Timing”, said Sarah Rodrigues in The Telegraph. Not just about when to put your tree up but also about when to take it down. “Everybody knows that it’s bad luck to keep decorations up” after 6 January – or do they? One man told me his neighbours keep their decorations up until March “and sometimes beyond”.

All this “grumbling” is “traditional”, said the BBC’s Annabel Rackham and Emily Holt. If you’re “following Christian traditions”, then you might put up your tree and decorations early in Advent but otherwise the choice is “down to you and your preferences”.

This year, though, it might be worth noting the British Christmas Tree Growers Association’s warning that the hottest summer on record has caused a “sparseness” problem, with many trees looking “gappy” and shorter than usual. If you’re after the “best” real fir tree, a specialist grower told The Telegraph, “the later” you can leave it, the better.