As a follow-up to the post on fake Christmas trees for tight spots, below is an excerpt from the reply to a letter written to the Financial Times' Undercover Economist column inquiring whether the author should bother taking down his/her Christmas tree, which had been left up until spring. My parents' tree in all its metallic glory stayed up for quite a while so I'm not convinced this wasn't written by my mom under an alias.
I think we can postulate a utility function along the following lines: having a Christmas tree up during the Christmas season brings positive utility, but diminishing marginal utility over time. After a while, the marginal utility is negative: the tree becomes an irritation, offering neither use nor ornament.
...
If the tree is still up, I would suggest that your problem is deeper than poor cost-benefit analysis: it is a profound tendency to put off action that is troublesome in the short term. We have developed an institution to deal with this. It is called the New Year’s resolution.
FT.com: Dear Economist: Should I take down last year’s Xmas tree?
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