I’ve had so many happy Christmases. They live on inside me forever

IN MY attic, in bags and boxes, are all the Christmases that have survived years and moves. It was always our tradition in the family to put the tree up the last Sunday before Christmas and not a minute before. The last few years I’ve slipped and simply decorated chimney pieces and stairs with lavish, scented fir boughs interspersed with clementines, cloves, candles, pine cones and tiny stars interlaced between.

The old wooden nativity scene sat below them – a tea light constantly burning.

A wreath was hung on the door and the Christmas candle lit in welcome in the hall window but always my eyes turned to the glass doors which should be hidden behind a huge real tree.

And so, for the last few years spending Christmas alone as not – now changed – allowed to fly with my COPD, the tree decorations have stayed in their bags and boxes.

They will again this year for I wouldn’t presume on the kindness I’m being shown to ask for a tree to be bought, transported and tussled up.

Wouldn’t sit directing the placements of my treasured decorations, each with a story to tell.

A couple are still intact from my childhood; there is Pierce’s first Disney one; intricate glass drops; ruby rich Tudor inspired padded crosses; heavy blown glass balls and remnants of older broken ones which were carefully pushed into the arms of the boughs until they could fit no further, often bouncing off and smashing all over again.

There’s the hand carved wooden angel and dove of peace; the parchment scroll of Oh Holy Night; miniature hand carved nativity scene and others always forgotten until re-found and thrilling me all over again.

I’ll never be fit enough again to climb the miller’s stairs to the upper floor and attic and although I refuse to countenance it, this could be my last Christmas.

But then how many of us know if it will not be the same for them in these troubled, desperate times?

But oh, the trees and the Christmases I have had – the utter joy of sitting in a semi-darkened room late at night smelling the sweet wafts of pine and enjoying the many pin pricks of light so carefully placed.

And of course, listening to carols, the link between then and now. For there’s always a then and always a now.

The joy of an excited child’s first awareness of the wonder of Christmas Eve and a Father Christmas on his way through the night sky as I read him ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas. A child, now a man, who reads the same story to his oldest from the first Christmas book I gave her.

My own simpler childhood joys of the wonder of Midnight Mass in the cathedral, my grandmother’s alto soprano voice ringing from the choir sending shivers down my back.

The utter faith of celebrating the birth of Christ, not a doubt in my mind; overcome with excitement as the priest laid the beautifully carved ‘baby’ in the manger.

The sound of our footsteps on the usually icy pavements, our breaths ahead of us as we headed home to fireside and a hot drink before bed and the day to come.

Then growing older and places at the table filled only by ghosts as my mother and I ceremoniously toasted each other with crystal lovingly handed down from the past. And always the tree casting its magic over the scene.

We two were family enough until, as must happen for life to move forwards, a man, then a child, occupied the empty spaces and new traditions intertwined with the old.

And then one day the first Christmas without my mother, when the once joyful day took on a melancholic mantle, but a small boy should not be aware of such things and so a different joy was rewoven into the fabric.

All those memories resurfaced every year with the gentle pulling out of the decorations on the last Sunday before Christmas and now they lie, unawakened in a French attic.

But in the end, they are only aidememoires for all is carried inside us, forever, in our hearts, in our souls.

I will be sad to be treeless again this year but only for a little while for I have been so lucky to have had so many, many happy Christmases filled with love and hope. They live inside me still to be pulled out at will.

For all this Christmas will be like no other but, please, don’t get caught up in a false madness where health is endangered.

Keep separate and safe – guard your precious ones, for in the end they are far, far more important than baubles and a groaning table of defiance.

It will come again – a time when toasts can be made in safety and traditions honoured and new ones made. That is the way of the world.

Some will never return to the table but they’ll always be there in the mind’s eye and in the heart.

But I will light my candle in the hall window to burn welcome through the night for the lost and the lonely.

Or in case a maiden seeks a place to give birth.

Joyeux Noël.