Reasons You Shouldn’t Have Taken Down Your Christmas Tree

This time of year in New Jersey, we have that depressing chore of de-Christmasing our homes. This includes tossing the Christmas tree.

However, to keep your sanity and reduce stress, I recommend that you consider keeping your tree set up for as long as possible. I have a cousin and a couple of friends who never take down their trees. Of course, it has to be an artificial tree. They’ll redecorate it with different ornaments for each holiday to keep their house festive at all times.

There is a good reason for keeping the spirit going much longer than traditionally expected. According to an article in The Wall Street Journal, there are many people following this trend including home decorators. They are resisting the way it’s always been done and choosing to never take down their trees.

The article cites another family who does this. Her Christmas tree stays up throughout the year, but its boughs change with the seasons, with rotating decorations for Valentine's Day and beyond, up to and through the following Christmas.

Decorator Cynthia Chamble says "There's always something to celebrate," and spends hundreds keeping her tree looking festive through every holiday and season.

It can include themes for summer, or have historical figures to commemorate Black History Month.

Some may use it as a way to memorialize their late mother around their birthday or the anniversary of their death. I’m not sure I’d be going that route, but I certainly am not going to judge something that makes someone happy.

If you try it you may find that it will help keep you in a positive and happy mood. Either way, it’s worth a try. My wife and I (mostly my wife) decided that we were giving it a shot. We have two trees and will only keep the smaller one up to see if we like it.

I think it’s worth repeating that if you’re going to try it to avoid the yearly chore, it must be an artificial tree. That positive mood-boosting effect will be reversed when your real tree dies.

Streaming giant Netflix has a lot of highly-anticipated movies to offer their subscribers. From comedies to grisly dramas, the streamer's January releases feature some of our favorite actors and producers. With the writers and actors strikes over, streamers and production companies are releasing projects that have been held off due to production being shut down in the latter half of 2023.

For Netflix, one of the streamer’s highest-profile new series, 3 Body Problem, was bumped out of 2023 and into 2024. This is the first post-Game of Thrones show from creators David Benioff and Dan Weiss, arriving in the Spring. The sci-fi drama has been in the works since 2020, starring Eiza González, Benedict Wong, and Game of Thrones alums John Bradley, Liam Cunningham, and Jonathan Pryce. Additionally, the live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender series is just as highly anticipated for fans of the beloved original Nickelodeon animated series. It will be coming to the streamer in late February.

Sofia Vergara stars as real-life Colombian cartel boss Griselda Blanco in a miniseries, looking completely unrecognizable. In it, she creates one of the most profitable cartels in history. With six episodes that are each an hour long, Griselda creator Eric Newman said Vergara was perfect for the role "not only because she, like Griselda, is a single mother who came to America from Colombia with nothing and built an empire, but because it was unexpected of her to do. Sofia has been thought of one way, a beautiful and brilliant comedic actress, and she is so much more than that."

For the movie fanatics, Netflix has a few standout films kicking off January alone. Another standout project is Society of the Snow, the harrowing story of the Uruguayan rugby team that crash-landed in the Andes mountains in 1972. Kevin Hart offers a new comedy in a heist film, and Dan Levy directs and stars in a dramedy titled Good Grief. Coming in March, Millie Bobby Brown stars in a fantasy action movie called Damsel. Later in the month, Lindsay Lohan stars in her second rom-com, Irish Wish. April brings Zack Snyder's sequel, Rebel Moon Part 2: The Scargiver.

Take a look below at the new additions that will be released in January 2024 on Netflix:

Spanish director J.A. Bayona’s thriller Society of the Snow debuts on Thursday, January 4. The film is the latest cinematic retelling of the miraculous story of the Uruguayan rugby team that crash-landed on a glacier in the heart of the Andes in 1972. The survivors join forces and become each other's best hope as they navigate their way back home, resorting to extreme measures to stay alive.

The following day on Friday, January 5, Netflix debuts dramedy Good Grief, written, directed, and starring Schitt's Creek's Dan Levy. In it, he plays a London-based artist who spends a year mourning his husband before making a startling discovery about their relationship on a trip to Paris with his best friends.

One week later on Friday, January, Kevin Hart stars in a plane heist comedy film called Lift. The story centers on Cyrus Whitaker (Hart), the leader of an international heist team who gets enlisted to steal $500 millions worth of gold from a mid-air passenger plane before the fortune ends up in the wrong hands. The ensemble cast includes Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Vincent D’Onofrio, Úrsula Corberó, Billy Magnussen, Jacob Batalon, Jean Reno and Sam Worthington.

Sofia Vergara will shock all her Modern Family fans as she dramatically shifts away from comedy with this miniseries. Debuting on the streamer on January 25, Vergara plays the ruthless Colombian “Godmother,” Griselda Blanco, who created one of the most profitable cartels in history. The six one-hour episodes come from the creators and executive producers of Narcos and has been described as a “cousin” to those two shows.