I wasn't sure either, but the interweb mostly seems to think it's today, when I always thought it was tomorrow. I think on balance I'll take mine down today.
Still, best thing about taking the decorations down is being able to eat the chocolates off the tree!
Christmas is not ended until Knut's nameday (the twentieth day after xmas, so January 13th) and unless the tree is shabby enough that it needs to go out before then, that is the day to take the tree out. All other xmas decorations follow the tree, time-wise, so...
As far as the church is concerned, tomorrow marks the first day of Epiphany - therefore the last day of the Christmas season is today. If you're being really traditional, in fact, the Epiphany season starts this *evening* with the eve of Epiphany (much as we have Christmas Eve - although I don't think there is anything special that happens on Epiphany Eve). Therefore decorations should come down today (and should have gone up on Christmas Eve. Unless you 'cheat' and have Advent decorations too ;-) ). However, I grew up hearing that you take them down on the 6th, and would never have known any different if it wasn't for actually getting involved in a real church. And around here, people keep their trees up until the day the scouts come to take them away ;-).
You wouldn't want the wise men to turn up on 6th January and find the place returned to normal and the babe removed from the manger and put back in the loft, would you?
I'm going to a mummer-style Twelfth Night tomorrow, so I think taking them down before I hit that would be most fitting. And I was always raised with it being the 6th when they came down, rather that by which they needed to come down.
It's true. But then we are talking about celebrations which supposedly concern events in a year which doesn't really fit the AD/BC timescale spun off from it...
I'm not promising they will come down then, though. When we were in Paris in February,the hotel still had its crib out. That was rather nice, I thought.
Sometime around now, not least because the tree is starting to fall apart under cat attacks! But I don't believe in any superstition gubbins about doing it by any particular time. I want to leave my snowman up forEVAH anyway as he's great (he's 5' tall and sits outside with flashing lights but a missing nose this year).
I guess it makes more sense if you think of it as "the house should be decorated for the twelve days of christmas" so they go up on Christmas eve (the day before the first day of Christmas) and stay up until the 6th Jan (the day after the last day of Christmas). But they should probably come down ASAP on the 6th, in the same way they should probably go up on the evening of Christmas Eve.
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Still, best thing about taking the decorations down is being able to eat the chocolates off the tree!
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(The 25th is the first day of Christmas, because how could Christmas Day not be one of the days of Christmas?)
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Except the priest at my mother's (Catholic!) church leaves them up 'till the following Sunday.