Christmas lasted longer than usual in the Isle of Man - thanks to lockdown.

The circuit breaker meant that decorations stayed up a lot later than Twelfth Night, the time they are supposed to be dismantled.

The Christmas tree was still lit up outside the Tynwald building in Douglas six weeks after Christmas, for example.

By the end of this week all vestiges of the festive season should be removed.

It usually takes a month for Douglas Council to remove all the town centre decorations.

Electricians were among the first to be allowed back to work and they began to dismantle them in the last week of last month.

But they still had to abide by social distancing rules as they did it before lockdown fully ended.

A council spokesman said: ’They were due to take them down starting from January 6 but had to go into lockdown at that time. It normally takes several weeks to remove them all and there may be greater priorities.

’They are concentrating on the Christmas trees and larger features and the smaller features will be dealt with later.’

The Isle of Man was the only place in the British Isles to have Christmas lights switch-on events, attracting around 8,000 residents to come and see them in their glory.

There was a lot of UK media coverage of the Strand Street lights being turned on, such as the Daily Mail’s article headlined ’The only place in Britain where Christmas is going ahead as normal’.

Lights still remained up in Strand Street, Douglas, over the lockdown in January and are planned to be removed by the end of this week.