My Christmas is excess all areas
WHEN it comes to Christmas, I am a firm believer that more is more. Not for me minimalist decorations, trendy trees that look like a bunch of twigs, or a couple of artfully wrapped gifts.
I am an unashamed stranger to restraint when it comes to the most wonderful time of the year.
Left to my own devices, the front of our house would look like Blackpool illuminations on speed and Poundland would be devoid of singing Santas, furry reindeer horns and fake snow because it would reside in every room in my house.
And when it comes to gifts, the law (in our household at least) states there must be a pile the size of the Cairngorms on Christmas morning. No matter that I have, in the past, wrapped up a 50p bag of cotton wool balls to make up numbers.
It is size, not cost, that matters.
I can’t say it hasn’t caused rows in the 20-odd years I’ve been married.
Only the annual battle over which month the central heating should go on rivals the arguments my husband and I have had over my Christmas excess.
I blame my mother, a woman who would begin stockpiling what she and I would argue were essentials – and my dad and husband might call tat – the moment September 1 arrived. Tat which, when my parents died, made its way to my house. How my husband laughed.
Yet of all the Yuletide detritus, it is the tree which commands the best of it.
You know all those celebs who post Insta photos of their perfectly colour co-ordinated, carefully positioned Christmas trees complete with expensive John Lewis baubles and artisan bows?
Well, ours is the antithesis of that. Our tree resembles the aftermath of an explosion which simultaneously took out a Dulux factory and a 99p shop.
I wouldn’t have it any other way because many of the items which crowd its branches hold precious memories. There is the multi-coloured pom-pom made by one of the kids in nursery. It’s a bit bald now – the cat took a dislike to it – but out it comes every year, a reminder of the time when Santa still called at our house.
It is joined by the cardboard ‘bauble’ with a dodgily coloured-in picture of the Holy Family and the wonkilysewn felt reindeer, both primary school efforts and evidence that it was just as well neither kid took A-level art.
There are relics from my own childhood on there too.
The pair of robins, eyes as twinkly as they were 40 years ago when they took pride of place on the Woolworths tree in our front room.
And there’s the funny little wicker bells in an odd shade of mustard – evidence of my parents’ smoking habits.
Emerging each year from the suitcase in the loft they still bring with them a whiff of my childhood home – a mixture of home-fried chips and Woodbines.
On there too are baubles bought as gifts down the years by family and friends and ornaments I’ve picked up along the way, happy reminders of that trip to York or London.
This all goes on the tree and a lot more besides – tinsel that adorned the halo of our angel in the Nativity, those bargain lights we found in a now closed department store – until, unless you stand well back, the cacophony of colour can make your eyes hurt.
But our Christmas tree isn’t intended as a fashion statement or trendy backdrop for TikTok videos. It’s a tree of memories.
And even my husband acknowledges that his less-is-more mantra will never apply to it.