Packing your Christmas decorations away? Think twice

There is also something gloriously anti-capitalist about keeping the tree up, about the retaining of something no longer of use, and (eventually) in a state of decay, for sentimental reasons. Let the Christmas tree stay up for January, its decorations falling off one piece at a time as its leaves become brown and crisp and it begins to wilt.

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When it was mentioned, warning-shot style, to my children, that some time soon the decorations would need to come down, the news was met with the anticipated mutiny. Children, for whom time is entirely abstract, mark the progression of the year through holidays, and they could see no reason for the Christmas tree to be bumped unless something else was to take its place. Would it be Halloween soon, my son asked hopefully, or Easter?

In a moment of brilliance, I realised that January 26 would be upon us in a few weeks and that the Christmas tree could be utilised to mark that date. Both holidays are imported and European, and neither is the bastion of unity that the propaganda would have us believe. One decoration, two public holidays – even the most economically minded could not object to that. Perhaps those still attached to the term “Australia Day” could be convinced to call it Taking Down The Christmas Tree Day, a day where they get really into the Southern Cross paraphernalia, get wasted on pre-mixed drinks, troll their Greens-voting nephews on Facebook and pack away the baubles. Or, perhaps, you just drag the now thoroughly expired tree onto the nature strip, take a deep breath and finally accept that the new year has arrived.

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