This morning we put up the Christmas tree. This had a comforting element of ritual. I searched fruitlessly through the landing cupboard for a red towel to put under the stand, to keep any spilt water off the floor, before remembering that I have a red table cloth (used in the past for collecting bee swarms) and looked for that with my beekeeping kit, before recalling that it was in a box in the spare room. We screwed the base of the tree into the stand, and turned it round several times trying to find the best side to face into the room, and shuffled it back and forwards so that the top didn't quite touch the sloping ceiling. Then the Systems Administrator went out, and left me to do the decorations.
Last year's lights had miraculously not tangled themselves up in the bag, and still worked (did you see the Matt cartoon of 3 December about Christmas tree lights?). I wasn't too happy, as I balanced on the second from top step of the ladder trying to attach the first string of lights, to look down and see Our Ginger chewing the second set. They still function, so he can't have bitten through the insulation. I am cautious enough about tree lights to turn them off while I fiddle about arranging them on the tree.
I like getting the decorations out of their boxes. Newspaper columnists with space to fill write annually about what's fashionable in trees this year. Does anybody take any notice, or are most people like us, decorating their tree with whatever they had last year, plus one or two additions? We have a set of slender glass drops, most of them a soft and lustrous red, three clear with snowflake patterns. I got those in Heals, probably over twenty years ago. There are some 'Shaker' decorations also dating from the 80s, bought over several years from the now-defunct Shaker Shop. Shaker Christmas tree decorations are almost certainly a misnomer, as from what I know of Shaker beliefs I can't think they had any such thing. These are folksy. There is a wooden teddy bear with articulated leg joints and a tartan scarf, a giraffe with wings, an angel with organza ribbon wings and a metal halo that goes at the top of the tree, and a secondary angel with checked cotton wings. There is a black cat with pipecleaner-thin arms and legs, wearing red mittens and a scarf, that gives me an odd frisson and sets off Strange Fruit in my mind as it hangs. There are three large glass balls, bought on holiday in Cracow with my parents and brought back as hand luggage.
Then there are lesser baubles, some comparatively classy ones from John Lewis, and some cheap and cheerful from B&Q. There is a set of sequined fruit, and a sequined bee, and a red metal trumpet and a couple of cookie cutters, one inexplicably shaped like a pig. The best ornaments go in the middle part of the tree, not right at the top where I'm likely to drop them putting them on or removing them, and the zone nearest the ground gets the coloured raffia ones, and the metal decorations from Ikea, since they are liable to be chewed or batted off the tree by the cats. There are a few unexpectedly heavy balls that have to be strung from stout twigs, or the very base of side branches, so that their weight won't bend the branches down too far.
The colour scheme is roughly red, white, gold and silver, but it's not that strict, and the look is a weird mixture of Victorian baroque glitter meets homespun crafts. There is no tinsel. And that's how it is. Every year. I don't want it to be different. I like getting the hanging cat and the Heals pendants out of the box. I don't care if purple, or white, or organic home gathered fruits are in fashion this year. Fashion has no place here. Likewise I do not feel any 'peer pressure to buy the whole of the White Company window display' to deck my festive table, which will be decorated with the same white lace table cloth and red imitation jacquard cloth it had last year, and the year before that. I have even washed and ironed them, though I haven't managed to get the wax stains from last year's candles out of the red cloth. We will bring out a very large hurricane lamp that someone gave us a couple of years back (customs can evolve) and I will make a wreath to go round the bottom of the hurricane lamp, and a table arrangement, using twigs and berries out of the garden. I will save on buying a piece of oasis foam and use a large potato as the base of the arrangement.
This year's tree is rather a monster. I was worried as we brought it up from the garage that we'd knocked the terminal bud off, because I have a thing about not cutting the tops off Christmas trees, but it's just as well it's no taller. It fits under the ceiling inside the door to the veranda with a centimetre to spare, no more. It looks very...vigorous. There are some strong branches shooting out at random heights above ground, so it is not a neat tapered cone. You can tell that it was not regularly disbudded or dosed with hormones like the ones in Gardeners World the Friday before last. The upper half is studded with cones, large and handsome. There is something wild and definitely Ent-like about it. I never bother with putting out sherry and mince pies for Father Christmas, but I could imagine the tree going for them, in the dark small hours. I'm rather pleased with it. I'm sure that lots of spirits will come and take refuge in it over the shortest days, which is after all the point of having a Christmas tree. I would never want a plastic one. I know that they don't drop needles on the floor, and they are neat, and some are very realistic nowadays, but a Christmas tree has to be a real plant. You can't expect the spirits to live in a plastic tree.
As we'd got the double doors open to bring in the tree the postman arrived, and he and I chatted about Christmas trees while he filled in the paperwork for a parcel, and it turned out that he knows my employers, because they are great fans of Scottish reeling, and he is in the ceilidh band that plays for their dances. He sent them his regards. The postman didn't sound Scottish. He must just like the music, which is fair enough. It's a small world sometimes.
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