When’s the right time to take down Halloween decorations?

I know for sure most people take their Christmas decorations down too late, but when do Halloween decorations come down?

Your Daily Lex.

We live in a neighborhood where people go all out for Halloween.

Halloween signage, giant inflatable murdering creatures all over the place, animatronics, all kinds of skeletons.

Some houses go truly crazy.

We put up some stuff.

We don’t have anything gigantic.

We put up, you know, foam gravestones, some pumpkins, some ghosts, you know, a mini skeleton, not these giant 7, 10, 12-foot skeletons, just, you know, tiny little things.

Some years we do Christmas lights, but of the Halloween variety, orange Christmas lights basically.

I don’t do those because I’m not good at them, and if Lauren doesn’t do them, then we don’t do them.

And then I change my front lights, which are, you know, Wi-Fi LEDs, I change those to spooky colors of some sort, which typically means like orange and red and black, something like that.

I use the Halloween themes from LIFX, I think that’s how they pronounce their company name, LIFX.

But when do you take down those decorations?

Like with Christmas lights, I think many people, or Christmas decorations, I think many people leave them up too long.

I get that maybe you want to leave them up for all 12 days of Christmas, but like January 1st seems like a really good time to take some of that stuff down, and certainly by the end of that first full week of January, you should be taking your stuff down, in my opinion.

There are some families in my development that, again, leave their Christmas stuff up until February or March.

There was one family that left their Joy up until April last year, and then threw out the Joy, because of course it got destroyed by being out that long.

So today I started taking down some of the Christmas stuff.

Nope, I don’t have Christmas stuff.

You can guess why.

Today I started taking down some of the Hanukkah stuff, but I didn’t, Jesus, not even that.

My mind is gone.

Nor did I take down Jesus stuff, I don’t have any.

I took down Halloween stuff, but not all of it.

So I still have some graves up, I still have some pumpkin stuff up, but I gotta take most of it down.

I will admit, I’m a bad dad this year, we didn’t get any real pumpkins.

My daughter, Sierra, wanted to carve a pumpkin, and the day I said I could get a pumpkin, she’s like, you know what, I don’t actually have time to carve it, so let’s not get one this year.

I will wear that guilt for probably the next decade, but it’s fine.

So I started taking down the Halloween stuff, and I haven’t finished.

If Halloween were until October 31st, then November 1st would be a perfect cutoff, right?

Like, oh, it’s a new month, take it down.

But it’s the day before, so you gotta have a little bit of time.

But I think this weekend is when the Halloween stuff has to come down.

We’re not spooky anymore.

Now we’re Thanksgiving mode, at best.

We’ve also, for several years, had an approach, or a pattern, or something, of we’re going to acquire one new Halloween thing each year.

This year, most of what I got was indoor Halloween stuff.

I have these three little skeletons and a little pumpkin that are like indoor things.

Those I’m happy to leave up a tiny bit longer, because it’s in my house, it’s not shameful, it’s just, I don’t know, it’s still too long.

They gotta come down.

So anyway, I’m taking down all my Halloween stuff this weekend.

This podcast is my declaration of same, and it’s gonna happen, so there we go.

Also, as a programming note, at least some of you are seeing a different bit of key art for this podcast.

Your spokesperson, that is the spokesperson for all the listeners of the show, John Siracusa, has already complained about the font choice on that current Stopgap logo.

At some point I’ll fix it, but it’s not my top priority.

Take down your Halloween decorations this weekend.

That’s an order.

And what do you think Christmas decorations are gonna be?

I think it’s gotta be, after the first seven, I think January 7th, or whatever weekend is nearest after that, is when your Christmas decorations gotta come down.

And we’ll put up menorahs in our windows when Hanukkah starts, and we’ll leave it up for all eight nights of Hanukkah, and then maybe a few nights after that, but then it’s gotta go, because it’s not Hanukkah anymore.

It’s not Hanukkah anymore.

So it’s not Halloween anymore, it’s not Christmas anymore, I mean, eventually.

These statements are all true.

So take your stuff down.

Thank you so much for coming to my Lex talk.

Have a great weekend.

Lex.

Lex.