Why You Can’t Wait to Take Down the Holiday Decorations

For most of my adult life, I’ve fought taking down the holiday decorations. As someone with a strict “no tree until the turkey is stored” policy, I try to stretch the holiday feels for as long as humanly possible. Every year, my psychotherapy clients notice when my twinkling pink tree goes up behind me. And every year we have the conversation about how, just maybe, because it’s pink, I can count it as a Valentine’s Day tree and keep it up even longer.

And yet, this year, something shifted. As soon as the New Year had officially rung in, I began slowly pestering my husband about bringing in the boxes to store our ornaments and seasonal decor. Even the display of Christmas cards from family and friends, which makes me feel a little more connected each season, was quickly stacked into a single bundle propped beside our window.

Interestingly, some Christian traditions treat taking down decorations as a kind of psychological and spiritual closure: in many Catholic households, the Christmas season extends through Epiphany (January 6) and officially concludes with the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, which typically falls the following Sunday—when the decor traditionally comes down (and in my husband’s case, buys him exactly one more day to take everything down).

No, I have not become grinchy—I’ve simply become more millennial. Social media memes abound about how the children of the boomer generation feel overstimulated by clutter. Having grown up amidst a sea of trinkets and little objects lining windows, kitchen sinks, and side tables, to us, beauty is a cleared-off counter.

The minimalism movement has taken off just as millennials have come of homeownership age. Having also come to adulthood amidst economic crises and chronic fears of recessions, we’ve also had to be mindful of how much “stuff” we can afford and therefore accumulate. But there is also a science behind all of this.

One study on minimalism found five major benefits resulting from minimalistic lifestyles. These included positive emotions, a sense of competence, autonomy, awareness, and mental space. In other words, less visual clutter may create more psychological breathing room.

A second study involved adults giving home tours and describing their spaces as “restorative” or “stressful.” Women who described their homes as cluttered showed cortisol patterns associated with chronic stress and experienced more depressed mood across the day (Saxbe & Repetti, 2010). Other research suggests that visual clutter competes for attention, taxing the brain’s ability to focus and process information—meaning the relief of clearing space may be partly neurological.

In the end, taking down the holiday decorations isn’t always about moving on from joy—it’s often about moving toward regulation. When the world already feels loud, cluttered, and demanding, our nervous systems don’t need more stimulation; they need fewer inputs. Sometimes, the most calming thing you can do for your nervous system is to reduce the visual noise. Clearing space can be a small but powerful way of signaling safety to the brain, restoring a sense of control, and making room for what actually matters. So, if you feel a sense of relief once the ornaments are boxed up, it may not mean you’re grinchy at all. It may simply mean your nervous system is asking for a reset.