It's two days after Epiphany: the streets are full of sad, denuded Christmas trees. Presumably some Merton Council truck will pick them up, sooner or later. It was always brought home to me by my mother how it was terribly, terribly bad luck to leave Christmas decorations up after Twelfth Night - a conviction that now causes me to scratch my head. Will the ghost of Caspar, Balthazar or Melchior come and hit me over the head with a frankincense smelling censer? There's nothing in the Bible that says one shouldn't leave one's artificial stars hanging up for an extra day or so, and yet somehow I internalized that this was akin to blasphemy. A bit of googling provides as explanation ... "in days past, people believed that the tree spirits (who sought shelter in the festive greenery used to decorate our homes) needed to be released back into the wild, or else the crops and greenery would not grow in the coming year." And more ... "others believe that Christmas trees must be taken down before the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve, or else you’ll be stuck carrying your baggage from last year into the new one." No one seems to be taking any risks around here.
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