Christmastide's yet to ebb
/The Boston Herald
Beverly Beckham
Two weeks until Valentine's Day and I still have my Christmas decorations up. We're not talking a few decorations, a snowman here and a poinsettia there. We are talking Christmas from head to toe, the creche, the garland, holly, wreaths, the lighted Christmas scene, the collection of Santas. We are talking cards still taped to the walls.
Only the fa-la-las are missing.
I intended to put everything away as I always have, right after the New Year. But I got the flu and by the time I got off the couch there were more pressing things to do.
Now it's almost Groundhog Day and look at me.
I take comfort in the fact that some people still have their outside lights up (I took mine down) and that many people, including me, still have beribboned wreaths on their doors. Which leads me to a question: Is there an expiration date for keeping a Christmas wreath? Is it Valentine's Day? President's Day? St. Patrick's Day?
What about garland around light posts? The posts look so bare without it and winter is bare anyway so what's the harm in keeping it up? And those cute little reindeer outlined in white lights? Are they Christmas decorations or winter decorations? And snowmen? And what about poinsettias? Mine is half dead but not quite. I know that with a little loving care I could keep it alive and cajole it into blooming next Christmas. My friend MaryAnn does this. She has a million poinsettias because she saves them and takes care of them. But she lives in Mobile, Ala., where it is warm. I want to throw my poinsettia in the trash. Is it OK to murder a half-dead but potentially salvageable Christmas plant?
I ask the experts at Heritage Flowers and Balloons in Lakeville, which happens to be owned by my cousin Darlene Donnelly and she assures me that it is OK to kill poinsettias - she kills hers. "Who can be bothered with them?" But she has customers who keep them in a closet and take them out the next winter.
About snowmen, she explains: "They aren't Christmas decorations. They can stay out from the first day of winter until the first day of spring." But those little reindeer with the while lights have to go.
"One wreath is OK but wreaths on every window of a house are not," says Teddy Dellarocco, landscape designer. "And as for the garland, that should have come down with the Christmas lights."
"No way," others in the shop say. "The garland can stay as long as the weather's bad."
"Or until it turns brown," Donnelly adds.
And herein lies the problem. There isn't a bona fide no-white-shoes-after-Labor-Day rule for Christmas decorations even among the experts, which means we are all winging it.
For years my friend Anne King didn't take down her tree. She took off the decorations but left the tree in its stand as a focal point all year long. The strategy worked because it was definitely the center of attention. She maintained it was easier to leave it than take it apart, put it in its box, lug it up to the attic and reverse the procedure a few months later.
I'm thinking she had a point. Already it's almost February and soon it will be Easter and then it will be summer and then we'll be back to Christmas.
I need to hurry up and put the decorations away before it's time to take them out again.
