Why we should all be leaving our decorations up right until February

What a change a working day tends to make. From a dwelling fantastically embellished for Xmas on 31 December to a dwelling stripped of all decorations, the Xmas tree taken to recycling. Some folks even just take down all their decorations on Boxing Day, although other individuals depart it until finally as late the 6th January. And still January is a time when most of us require a bit of color and sparkle as a great deal as – and likely additional than – in December. 

And guess what? According to English Heritage, it’s beautifully acceptable, and even appealing, to depart your tree and decorations up till…1st February. No, it is not terrible luck – the idea that leaving Christmas decorations past the Epiphany on 6th January is a contemporary principle. Traditionally, English properties stayed decorated up right until Candlemas, which is on 2nd February. 

Candlemas, also known as the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus Christ, the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, was an important day in the Medieval spiritual calendar, and it culminated with a banquet and a candlelit procession on the 2nd February. This was also the date when candles for the year forward would be introduced to churches to be blessed, therefore the title.   

And although it has a long time given that Candlemas was widely celebrated, it tells us one thing appealing about how people utilised to consider about the winter holidays and the dark winter months that follow Xmas. Today, we feel about January as a thirty day period of harsh self-self-control and radical lifestyle variations, believing that starting off the 12 months in an ascetic way will enable us attain additional in the new 12 months. Some of us give up booze, whilst others go on demanding diet programs or undertake intense exercising regimens – all in the course of a thirty day period when it is nevertheless dim until eight in the early morning.