O’ Christmas tree

It’s all needles, swearing and smoking elves for our columnist

BOOM. AS SOON AS THE FINAL BONFIRE NIGHT FIREWORK EXPLODES

(or, if it’s a Green event, asthmatically expires) I’m on countdown to The Tree.

For me, the tree – the getting of it, the decorating of it, especially the decorating of it – is emotionally loaded. It sets the scene for a peaceful Nöel, happening, as it does, before Christmas descends into a frantic melee of diary hysteria and not entirely sober Amazon ordering.

The moment has to be perfect. Candles burning, carols playing and all persons present emotionally balanced and preferably not wearing flammable sports clothing.

Alpha Male, predictably, does not give a bauble, so we end up with the following Christmas tree clashes:

❶ When to buy it. I can just about sit on my hands until 1st December. Maybe a week more if I’m sedated by eggnog and plied with 35-percent-vol cake. AM thinks anything before 20th December is de trop. I tell him, if people come round for festive drinks and we are treeless, it’s a social faux pas on a level with serving Doritos Roulette (it has happened. They were confiscated).

❷ Where to buy it. Ideally AM would chop it down from a forest with his own axe, but seeing as the removal of conifers from our nearest green space would result in his certain arrest, we end up in a garden centre (which for the festive period is masquerading as Santa’s toy factory). There’s standing room only, multiple screaming toddlers and people (okay, us) getting into car-park rage.

❸ Size. While I’m all about symmetry and lengthy discussions on Nordmann Fir vs Norway Spruce (fragrance or needle retention people, we can’t have both), AM is all about size. Never mind the limitations of the car or our ceiling. Last year at the garden-centre-come-grotto, he failed to grasp the clearly signed system of noting the size of Christmas tree/paying for it at the till/collecting it with the receipt. So he took the seven-footer into the store, wiping out a display of Christmas chutney and an OAP in the process, and threw it on to the desk with a proud flourish. He did not take kindly to the sales assistant, sorry, Mrs Christmas, informing him of his error. AM thus resisted the offer of help from a nine-stone elf to the car and attempted to shove the tree in through the boot. Other assorted ‘elves’ on a break puffed on their e-cigs and looked on with amusement. Civility among the Greens finally broke down when the kids reacted negatively to being impaled with needles and the tip bent precariously against the windscreen. When we got it home, the tree was indeed too tall, and was forced to bend at the point it hit the ceiling (think Stephen Merchant in a Wendy house). AM was then tasked with putting the tree into the stand, which resulted in much swearing, and a flesh wound.

❹ Aesthetics. AM does not understand the plethora of fairy lights needed to counter my SAD. And he’s bemused by my militance on decorations.

Here one needs to balance the selflessness of motherhood with the desire to create a tree of Instagrammable beauty. Do you favour the coffee lids dipped in glitter and one-eyed Santas with cotton wool beards or the Liberty hand-blown Venetian glass jobbies? Hmm. I think the children’s things are so precious they should be placed at the back of the tree for their own protection. Anyway, last year, once we had navigated the above, we all stood ready for the big switch on. Nothing. Zilch.

At which point, we remembered that we should have tested the lights first. After hours of twiddling every bulb and AM sliding under the tree in his best shirt to find the switch (which must be hidden for stylistic purposes, obvs) the lights worked. Hurrah! But the tree was leaning precariously – like AM after one too many mulled wines. Then, just as I’m making peace with the wonky tree, this: “Look Mummeeeee, I’ve found my baby Cheesus and I’m going to hang him right here…”

Happy Christmas.

“The tree was LEANING precariously – like AM after too many mulled WINES”