What does your Christmas tree mean to you?

As we move into the New Year and people are taking down their Christmas trees I began to think what does your Christmas tree mean to you?  Do you have a colour coordinated super designer one, that you change every year, do you match it to your home furnishings, or is it a tree, like mine, that has many meaningful decorations that you have collected over the years or your children have lovingly made? When my children were young I always used to have a real tree, however spending many New Year’s Eves away from home, I felt a real tree was wasteful. In true Yorkshire style, I purchased a lovely artificial tree in the January sales about 8 years ago.

The angel on the top of the tree was mine from my childhood, yes she’s tatty, yes she looks like she’s had a few too many Baileys, but she’s my angel on top of my tree and put it up with love every single year!

I have a tiny robin made from a fir cone which I made probably circa 1964, again tatty but meaningful. I have a few decorations the boys made when they were little, glittery sparkly creations. My brother also has decorations from our childhood and they proudly adorn his tree every year for similar reasons.

When my children were growing up, we often bought an bauble for that year from places we visited. We have a Disney land Paris one from 1999 plus Mickey, Pluto and Goofy Disney characters that the boys chose there.  I visited  the Grand Canyon four years ago and dutifully brought an enormous bauble from there.  I have 2 baubles from Nepal showing Buddha’s eye, this year I bought  funny little Finnish creatures from Rovaniemi when I visited in February.

There is a general theme of red and gold on my basic baubles, beads and lights, although many decorations are wooden. The most thoughtful present I received this year was from a little girl called Holly, whom I tutor.  She made me a decoration dated for this year having looked at my tree already posted on Facebook and matched the colours. How wonderful was that? Very meaningful, as next year and the years after when I take my decorations out I will think of her and her mum who I also taught, back in the day!

This year many people put their trees up mid November trying to cheer themselves up with the current lockdown, Covid-19 situation. I get that, anything to brighten the situation. However, in my house the tree always goes up on the 9th of December. This is because it is the  anniversary of my mother’s death. This year marked 10 years, time has just flown by. 10 years ago my 3 boys and I had just finished decorating the tree when my father rang us to tell us the terrible and very unexpected news.
Consequently my tree has not been up as long as many others this year.  I was surprised to see that lots of friends were taking the tree down on Boxing day simply because they were bored of it and wanted it down. I for
one will be keeping mine up until Twelfth-night. The rest of the house decorations will be down before then though.
This has been the quietest Christmas and New Year that I can remember.  I wish you all a safe and happy 2021. Let’s hope that things improve quickly for you all, so I can travel somewhere new and buy a new bauble for Christmas 2021!