when does christmas tree come down

Most traditions say you take your Christmas tree down around Twelfth Night, which is either 5 or 6 January, but lots of people also choose New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day instead.

Classic tradition: Twelfth Night

Many Christian and folk traditions treat the end of Christmas as Twelfth Night, marking the close of the “12 days of Christmas.”

Depending on how the 12 days are counted, this falls on either the evening of 5 January or on 6 January (Epiphany), when the visit of the Three Wise Men is celebrated.

Other popular dates

A lot of people now pick a practical or symbolic date that suits their routine.

Common choices include:

• 26 December, if you like a “clean slate” right after Christmas.

• 31 December (before midnight), to start the new year without old decorations up.

• 1 January, as a neat “new year, new look” point in the calendar.

Safety and real trees

If you have a real tree, you might need to take it down earlier for safety and cleanliness.

Dry trees can become a fire risk and drop lots of needles, so many households pack them away once the branches start to brown or shed heavily, even if that’s before Twelfth Night.

What most people actually do

Surveys in some countries show that roughly a quarter of households still aim for Twelfth Night, while a sizable share prefers to have everything down before the new year.

Online forum discussions and lifestyle sites increasingly frame it as a personal choice: follow tradition if it matters to you, or pick any date between 26 December and 6 January that feels right for your home and schedule.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.