I think anyone who is able to survive working in a UPS shipping hub during the holiday season is entitled to leave their tree up however long they need to. (Frankly, I'm surprised the spectre of PTSD didn't prevent you from putting up a tree at all! But this is your first year...) My neighbors have a plan for leaving their Christmas lights up all winter. They sting mostly white lights, and then add separate strands of all red and all green. They have lit wreaths on their windows from about Thanksgiving to Epiphany... then they put lit hearts on their windows, and only use the red and white lights for another month or so... then they put lit shamrocks in the windows and stick with green and white for about a month. Theoretically, this is lots of work, but they are only changing out the indoor componants during the cold months... For your sake, I hope the tree in question is artificial!

It sounds like you would want to call a "certtified arborist", usually they are more geared towards tree preservation than tree surgeons. You can find a directory of ISA certified arborists at treesaregood.com

I take my decorations down this weekend, the weekend after all twelve days of Christmas are over. I actually saw a tree out for pick up on Christmas Day afternoon. It was so sad. On to the question....I do not re-arrange much after taking down the Christmas stuff. I used to rearrange more when I would move every few years. The stuff I had just wasn't purchased with any one particular space in mind. Each living room was a bit different size and shape and flooring color. I'd get one or two pieces before the next move and just try to make it all work somehow. However, I've lived here long enough to slowly assemble my livingroom stuff into a cohesive group. There are minor things I can and do change, but not much. Tabletop decorations and artwork are changed a bit every few months, but I wouldn't classify that as re-redecorating. This is, however, a time for a good thorough cleaning since I'll be getting behind and under everything anyway. One thing a friend does is to put up her "Christmas" village when her Christmas decorations get put away. Those villages really have very little Christmas to them, they are mostly just generic winter. For her, it keeps the physical stress of Christmas decorating AND visual stress of too much to admire at a minimum.

dedtired, that's the "old" Annie. I used to decorate everything, indoors and out. I have Christmas mugs and Christmas platters, Christmas dishtowels and Christmas bowls. Ashley has a huge collection of snowglobes, probably 50 or 60 of them, and Amanda has nearly that many nutcrackers. Amanda doesn't even put them up at her house, LOL, they stayed packed in the basement this year. Ashley didn't get anything out either. ?Several years ago I realized that I just dreaded Christmas, I was learning to despise it with a vengeance, all the commercialism, the glitz, the hoo-rah. I spent so much time fiddling with decorations, baking cookies, mailing cards to people I haven't seen for years that I didn't have any time to enjoy any of the Christmas things I really loved. So I stopped. Now I watch the Muppet Christmas Carol and How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Charlie Brown. I bake cookies with the grandkids and I go to the Christmas Eve Candlelight Service and the family Christmas party. I even gave up the "Christmas Eve party for 40 family members where I did all the cooking". This year I blew $75 and rented the townhall and everyone brought a dish to pass. Now with Elery's family I have "Christmas stuff" to do with them too, so I need to have some time for that. So, now that I have Elery and his family to add to the celebrations and Dad's gone and the grandkids are here and Ashley's mostly gone, things are changing. What will Christmas eventually become? Darned if I know, but every year it changes just a little bit..... Annie