Tinsel until February?

Local rules for festive decorations unearthed

When you put up your Christmas decorations and take them down, do you adhere to local traditions? What you are said to need to do to avoid bad luck in the year ahead varies widely across England, according to researchers from the University of Leeds.

The experts in English life and language uncovered an unexpected treasure trove of Christmas-related, plant lore from across England when they delved into their internationally prized archive for a heritage project exploring and preserving England’s dialects.

“We stumbled on these fascinating stories about Christmas traditions quite unexpectedly when we were looking at the oral history and reminiscence sessions that had been held in the 1950s and 60s,” said Dr Fiona Douglas, the project lead for the Dialect and Heritage Project at the university.

In some parts of the county, holly and ivy had to be burned at Candlemas (40 days after Christmas) while in others, they had to be kept to the following year to protect the house from lightning.

In east Cornwall, decorations had to come down on 7 January – also known as St Distaff’s Day, an unofficial holiday to mark the day before women resumed their spinning after Christmas. Households in Warwickshire had to rid themselves of all greenery before Twelfth Day, 5 January. In London, all traces of Christmas had to be gone by Twelfth Morning.

But in Somerset, Cheshire, Yorkshire and Lincolnshire there was a sliver more breathing space: households only risked a year of bad luck if they failed to shed their greenery by Twelfth Night.

Gloucestershire families had to get it down by 12 January – possibly to coincide with Plough Monday, the day men returned to work after the Christmas break. Derbyshire was the most relaxed county, with a choice of Twelfth Night or Candlemas, on 2 February.

“What’s interesting is that so many of these traditions still persist and they still vary across the country,” she added. “Discovering that these varieties are still alive and well is a particular delight because I think we often feel that, despite the fact that we’re part of a big, international community, we live in a very homogeneous society.

“These findings show that localness did and still does make a big difference, and that we’re all still individuals,” she added.

So what to do with the greenery once it has been taken down? Again, customs vary but the penalty for a mistake was harsh, with families risking death, fire or the devil entering the house.

In Shropshire, for example, a mistletoe bough had to be preserved until a new one was hung the next year. In Warwickshire, holly had to be burned but mistletoe and rosemary had to be kept until they following year to keep ghosts away. But in Somerset, Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, burning would cause a death in the family. Greenery had to be thrown away instead.

Susan Drury, author of Plant Lore in England: 1600-1800, said: “The basic instinct for survival and preservation, the attempts to guard against misfortune or explain it in ways readily understood and seek reassurance about the future, is at the base of many beliefs connected with plants, not just Christmas greenery, and its manifestations are complex and often elaborate.”