When it comes to Christmas trees, it has to be the real thing - Susan Morrison
This year, I thought I’d break with a Christmas tradition and buy an artificial tree. We’ve usually gone for a real one, because I thought it was better for the planet.
We always get our tree on December 10. This is to soothe my husband. Yorkshiremen can only acknowledge Christmas under two circumstances. A) “in bloody December” and B) “why do you want to get the tree now? They’ll be cheaper on Christmas Eve!”
Naturally I choose the tree, we all heave it into the car then drive home with branches in our ears. One year I bought a five footer from a shop around the corner. I carried it home, overlooking the fact that I’m a five footer myself. I staggered home like a one-woman Birnam Wood coming to get Macbeth.
But, I thought, soon it will be just me and my Yorkshireman. Both kids will be flying the nest next year. It seemed silly for us to be hauling Nordman firs about like aged lumberjacks when a tree-in-a-box can be delivered to your door.
Anyway, fake foliage has improved vastly since the plastic firs of my childhood, when they veered dramatically between what could best be described as large green toilet brushes and Vegas glitz.
I strongly suspect they were more flammable than the real thing. Given the standard of seventies wiring, dodgy decorative lighting and my dad’s tendency to fix everything with sticky black tape, it's a wonder our tree-top fairy didn’t do an outstanding Joan of Arc impression at least once.
So, I raised the matter at dinner. I wasn’t prepared for the outcry. But it’s tradition, wailed my son. We always buy a real tree. We do, I thought and I remember when he was so small he could run under the trees on display, his cheeks bright red in the freezing dark.
And then suddenly he was so tall that he, for the first time, hoiked the tree onto his shoulder and got it into the car, with a breezy “there you go, mum”. It was very cold that day. Made my eyes water slightly.
Ok, I said. We’ll buy a real one.