A word from the Editor: It is just not Christmas without a real tree

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It is just not Christmas without a real tree to decorate

Her logic is impeccable.

“We have spent a fortune,” she says, “on painting, decorating and new carpets and then you want to drag a dead tree into the house.”

This year her fake fir went up even earlier and was accompanied by two or three blasts from an aerosol containing the “authentic” scent of pine needles.

My daughter was quite happy with that, and I was almost persuaded.

Not so my two sons, fresh back from university and hungry, not just for all the comforts of home but the traditions too.

“When are we going to get the actual tree, Dad?” the eldest asked, eyeing the fraudulent version balefully.

“And what’s that terrible smell?” My wife gave me a look.

“It will be smaller than last year’s,” I said, “I promise.”

Frankly it had to be smaller than last year’s. A lot smaller.

In a rush of enthusiasm last December we had bought a tree so tall it was interfering, seriously, with the light fittings.

Virtually every bauble and decoration we possessed, including the ancient glass ones strung with various bits of coloured cotton and the preposterously heavy Tiggers and Winnie-the-Poohs we had bought the children years ago at Disneyland Paris were called up in service of that gargantuan pine.

When the time came to put the star on top your columnist, hobbled by a dodgy right knee and not at all good with heights, had to mount a stepladder and stretch across a jungle-like canopy of prickly branches to attach the thing.

“It’s not quite straight,” came the inevitable call to the summit from my daughter as she stood in the safety of Base Camp One down on the floor.

“Well, you bloomin’ well climb up here and do it,” I huffed and puffed, struggling to straighten the star without being impaled or plunging to my doom.

The tree looked magnificent when it was fully decorated and we had finally found a couple of strings of lights that worked.

Is just not Christmas without a real tree and it is not Christmas, either, without seeing my youngsters

Unfortunately it dominated our back room.

Tables and chairs had to be carefully rearranged to accommodate it.

On Christmas Day it was like having our lunch in a forest.

“That is absolutely the last time a tree is coming into our house,” said my wife and, despite the joy that comes only from decorating a real tree, I was not inclined to disagree.

However time is the great healer, apparently, so my wife made no serious attempt to stop the four of us, plus dog, heading out of the door early last week to track down this year’s specimen.

“No more than 6ft,” she instructed us.

“But I’m 6ft 2in,” complained my eldest son, who has a notion that a tree should always tower over him.

“The stand will take it up to 7ft,” said my youngest son, knowledgeably.

(I can’t believe how seriously they take these things.)

I am sure the people who sell Christmas trees on the high streets of London are actually quite normal blokes (they always are blokes) and not actually the assembled villains from a Dickens novel they always appear to be.

Certainly if they looked any different I would be very disappointed.

This year’s crop were classics of the tree-selling genre: raw-faced Cockney geezers in big coats, wooly hats and fingerless gloves who exhibit an extraordinarily deft touch when it comes to displaying their wares.

“Take ya time, take ya time,” our salesman urged, as we made our way along the serried ranks of firs.

“See anything you like and I’ll spin it out for ya.”

Once a tree is selected they pull it out and spin it round for you to see, while coyly looking away.

It is almost as if they are showing you a risqué statuette and don’t want to appear too interested.

We had two or three “spun out” but after this number a sort of “tree blindness” sets in and it is hard to distinguish one fir from another.

I used to have a theory that if you were having the tree delivered you got whatever they decided to send round, no matter what you picked out, but I have grown less cynical with age and the tree that turned up, a little narrower in the lower branches than previous years, was exactly what we had chosen.

I understand my wife’s point of view but Christmas is just not Christmas without a real tree and it is not Christmas, either, without seeing my youngsters (21, 18 and 15) rush to decorate it with the same enthusiasm they have had for the job since they were about five.

It’s good to know some things don’t change.

On that thought, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas indeed! 

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