As I understand it, the Christian calendar has today (5th January) as being “Twelfth Night”. It is the time when the three Wise Men/Kings visited the new born child. Some cultures have Twelfth Night as the 6th as they count Boxing Day as the 1st day of Christmas. Traditionally, in the West it is the day when Christmas gets put back into the loft, for at least the next 340 days.

So today is the start of the time when you suddenly realise what it has actually cost. This is when those credit card bills start to hit the floor and you begin to wonder how on earth you are going to pay for it all. But most people do manage to pay for it, even if it does take until next November.

The worst part of “Taking Christmas Down” and I think a lot will agree is that there is always that one lone decoration that gets missed. Stuck in an obscure place that you never even think to look at, it sits there all alone. Until that is, when you get a visitor that spots it and you have to either tell them that you’re keeping that one up or laugh embarrassingly at your own incompetence. Hate it!

Of course then there is the tree to deal with. If it’s a real cut tree, you have to find some way of getting rid of it. Back in the day when I was young, all you did was leave next to your dustbin and the ‘bin-men’ would take it away. Now of course, that rarely happens and it means either a trip to the tip or paying someone. If it is one of those artificial trees, you have the difficulty of getting it back in the bag/box that it came out of. Not an easy task. Last year we bought a small living tree in a pot, and it stood on the deck outside for nearly twelve months. It is in a smallish pot, to try and stunt its growth a little, but it managed to put on about 23/26 cms in height. It just went in the place we wanted, but I doubt it will go there next year.