After more than three weeks of gracing my living room, my Christmas tree is coming down today. It's a tradition in our family - indeed, in many Catholic families - for the tree to stay up until the first Sunday of January, the Feast of the Epiphany, honoring the arrival of the Three Wise Men at the manger in Bethlehem.
For most of my childhood, we selected freshly cut trees for the holiday. Artificial trees just didn't look good. My brothers and sisters were anxious to have the tree up as soon after Thanksgiving as possible. But our parents made us wait....and wait......and wait - typically until mid-December.
Looking back, I understand why. We kept the tree up into early January, not the day after Christmas. If we put the tree up in late November, that meant it would stand for up to 6 weeks. Six weeks of falling needles, a drying tree and eventually a significant fire hazard.
Once we found an artificial tree that looked nice, the safety and maintenance concerns went away, and it's become a tradition for the kids and grandkids to set up the tree at the farm on Thanksgiving weekend.
But I wonder if, in its own way, the old timing wasn't the better idea after all. While we little ones were anxious to have the tree up as soon as possible, the wait reminded us of the real reason for the season: an infant born in Bethlehem.
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