March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Why Christmas in Maine lasts All year long

Grandma was a neatnick. As much as she loved the cheer and glitter of the holidays, she was adamant that the Christmas tree be removed the day after Christmas.

It was the needles that bothered her. Any stray fir spills on the floor were immediate candidates for the dustpan or the carpet sweeper. Thus it was that my family upbringing taught me to end the Christmas season in a timely fashion.

Other Maine families didn’t share my grandmother’s zeal for sweeping out the old and bringing in the new. I always assumed that the habit of leaving a wreath on the door until the daffodils bloomed was due to nothing more than forgetfulness — or laziness. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The fact is, the stated Christmas season and the unofficial Maine Christmas season are two separate and distinct entities. Officially speaking, the Christmas season begins halfway between Thanksgiving and Christmas and ends at midnight Jan. 1. The unofficial season can be broken down into separate time frames. Let’s start at the beginning.

We must first understand that Mainers love Christmas decorations, are always anxious to put them up and loathe to take them down. Nobody will ever admit to this, but it’s a fact. Nothing, not even the girls high school basketball championships, cold beer and fresh sweet corn can take the place of Christmas in the heart of a true Mainer.

And so the unofficial Maine Christmas season begins the day after Thanksgiving. That’s the long-awaited day when trees, wreathes, red bows and fir ropes are put on display. These items have been ready since the day after Halloween. The little cardboard pictures of pumpkins, bundles of cornstalks and Pilgrims are shoved back in the closet to make way for flashing lights around the door and garlands on the mailbox post. In Maine, nobody will ever fault you for beginning the season this early. If they did, you could point out that all the stores begin the season early, so you can too.

Come Jan. 1, people know full well that they can leave the decorations up for at least two more months without raising any eyebrows, since who could blame anyone for not wanting to traipse around in the snow, taking down Christmas decorations. The bind comes in March.

By now, wreathes have turned brown, and the faded red bows and tin-foil holiday posters become terribly conspicuous. One favorite excuse for not taking the decorations down now is “cabin fever.” This is an annual malady that takes the pep out of a person. “I just don’t feel like doing anything, much less bothering with that old, brown, fir garland around the door,” we think.

Easter is the unofficial end to the Christmas season in Maine. Still, some people push it. These are the diehards who really don’t care what you think. These folks happily staple pictures of the Easter Bunny to the door — just under the half-denuded Christmas wreath.

That time between Easter and the Fourth of July is reserved for the truly daring. This crowd has devised special ways to keep the Christmas decorations up without actually appearing to do so. For instance, a string of lights hung on a grape arbor can simply be considered decorative without alluding to the holidays.

Another ploy includes leaning last year’s tree in the ell of a house or other convenient location. It can be claimed that birds use the thing as shelter.

After the Fourth of July, all Christmas decorations, with the exception of carefully placed strings of lights, are taken down for another year. But by then, it’s only another five months until Christmas — and then it starts all over again!

Tom Seymour is a freelance writer from Belfast.


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