No Claus says I can’t do what I want with tinsel
IT MAY be news to my long-suffering husband but I intend going all out on the Christmas decorations this year. Granted, he may have smelled trouble the other day when he caught me stringing some Christmas lights around the garden rails and insisted on their removal lest they catch fire during the rain.
Naturally, I ignored him – electronics is not his suit – and pressed ahead, forcing the rescued ‘Santa Stop Here’ signs that he had consigned to the attic in 2005 into the ground.
If I had my way there’d be a lit-up sleigh twinkling on the roof to match the inflatable Santa Claus I bought in Galway many moons ago and who spends this part of the year peering into the chimney pot. The dazzling houses in Finglas decked up each year in gaudy winter wonderland excess would have nothing on me.
Except that my hands are tied by a husband who, like many in my neighbourhood, mistakenly believes that Christmas decorations should be an expression of good taste and refinement and that we should be aiming for a more pared-back style of illumination.
EVERY year he complains that my festooning g the Christmas tree with multi- coloured lights s destroys it. The lights should d be either white or gold, he e scolds as he twists and tucks s armfuls of holly and ivy y around the wire halo, before e swaddling it in a linen garr land and hanging it on the Farrow and Ball painted hall door.
OK I jest, he’s not that committed. Let’s just say he’d like nothing more than for me to exercise my creativity through a range of sophisticated door wreaths and seasonal table settings rather than tinsel, snow globes and shaving foam masking as snow.
In the unbending rules of Christmas décor, it seems that the over-the-top ornamentation favoured by me is considered garish and tacky, totally inferior to the subtle objets d’art beloved of the self-appointed mistresses and masters of less-is-more elegance and restraint.
Which explains why we are shortly about to be locked in the war of the baubles, with himself favouring a few carefully chosen ornaments for the real tree and me throwing all that glitters and glows at the artificial monstrosity in the kitchen corner.
But who writes these ridiculous rules anyway and decides what tree has most aesthetic appeal or that wooden bunting is better than plastic tat or that glitz should be frowned upon?
Is it not the truth that decorations are by definition tacky and that the pretence of class and elegance is just a marketing con?
In normal times, I’d have more to worry me, but with Christmas shrivelling into a state of nonexistence, the matter of decorations has become significant.
It seems to me that spangly strings of silver stars and Santa grottos are the only thing that differentiates next week from the 40-odd weeks that have rolled in since our hateful Covid journey began.
SANT A doesn’ t come to my house any more. I’m not a regular enough massgoer to deserve a ticket for Christmas Day Mass. I have been cooking up a storm more than ever this year and dining in with my nearest and dearest, so forgive me if I can’t work up any enthusiasm at the prospect of serving up even more steam. So what’s left then of Christmas, then?
All I have are my garish decorations and the stubborn conviction that a house bearing them holds a lot more fun and spontaneity than one where every crib and card has been given a pass by the fussy taste police. And a husband who is unswervingly of the view that on this, as in so much more in life, I am greatly mistaken.