@kËj Xcc ^fe\ :_i`jk$dXjj ZiXZb\ij
NO escaping the ‘C’ word – it really is CHRISTMAS with baubles on now.
But just when did it get to be a competitive bleedin’ sport?
Back in the day you’d drag the same sad old threadbare tree from the loft and dig out the decorations your nan bought from her local Co-op with her Green Shield stamps.
Now? Now?? Everything has to be bigger, better, brighter and blingier.
It’s a new tree every year – preferably an environmentally-friendly 8ft job from an organic plantation – a set of shiny, colour co-ordinated baubles and enough lights to be seen by aliens.
But the killer is that people now pay professionals to come and put their tree up for them.
What, seriously folks, is that about?
Surely the point of decorating your home at Christmas is the fun of the family getting together and doing it themselves. If you have little kids your tree will look like an explosion in an OCD nightmare.
If it’s just the two of you it’s champagne o’clock and taking it in turns to fill the branches, which will look dreadful when you sober up.
Either way, it’s the foundation for fuzzy, warm festive memories.
It is not the same when you have a team from John Lewis – £450 since you ask – to do the job for you.
And why have one tree when you can blow your neighbours totally out of the water with three? Because that’s the new trend. A fully-decorated tree in every room. Even the bog. Not unusual these days for those with more money than sense to spend £450 on a tree and hang a grand’s worth of tat on it. But that’s quite cheap. John Lewis are also flogging a 15ft unlit artificial tree for £999. Obviously it’s our imageobsessed celebs who are driving this trend. England keeper Jordan Pickford and his wife Megan, left, shared a picture of his tree weighed down with an avalanche of baubles, ribbons and soft toys. A mere £2,000 – probably 10 minutes’ work in his world.
Not to be outdone, “comedian” Paddy McGuinness posed with a tree five times his height covered in gleaming gold lights. But no plastic, as his model missus Christine had used all that in her face and boobs, obvs. Even the lovely Strictly Come Dancing star Katie Piper couldn’t resist flaunting her Swarovski-crystal decorated tree. I stopped totting up how much that cost after I realised she was probably sponsored.
But the real icing on the vegan Christmas cake comes from poor little rich girl Tamara Ecclestone who boasted she had blown £3,500 on decorations, a grand on two trees and £1,000 on a reindeer. As you do.
What? You haven’t hired a reindeer this year? Hang your head in shame.
Though possibly you have a unicorn instead, as that is the decoration of choice for millennial snowflakes. Especially if it’s in sparkly pink and has a dolphin decoration as a chum.
It’s enough to give baby Jesus and his lowing oxen a total inferiority complex.
Stars and wise men are so two millennia ago. When they didn’t have social media. Because let’s face it, if your timeline isn’t filled with pictures of your friend’s trees, then you obviously don’t have any mates.
Guilty as charged. Yes I bought a new tree. Yes, I added a few new baubles and yes, I posted a photo of it. And yes, it’s definitely better than yours!
But my favourite bit of Christmas tree trivia?
That 1,000 people a year are injured by their Norseman pines, spruces and firs.
Yay! Love a tree that really gets the needle…