Christmas trees resist becoming Christmas trees to the very last. You’ve got to hand it to them, their spirit is admirable.

First of all they only really grow well in cold or rainy places like Oregon, making the getting of them a bummer for anyone in the business. I don’t think this is by accident.

The hoopla of getting them into the car and then through the door and then the left-a-bit-right-a-bit-watchit!-aaaaaargh! part is a given. Any fool plumping for a real tree ought to be prepared for that.

But, standing (slouching) finally (sulkily) in the corner, the rebel tree is still not ready to submit to humiliating decoration, for every twig is malevolently designed to thwart the bauble. All the needles face t’wards twig’s end making the slipping of an ornament’s loop on a tricky, pokey proposition, especially when arabesquing on a 3 -legged stool at a 45 degree angle.

Disrobing the tree in January is a doddle by comparison but, even then, they go out fighting, carpet-bombing the sitting-room with needles you can never completely remove ’til February.

I can see why MacBeth was scared shitless when he saw Burnham Wood on the march; he was no fool; he knew trees take no prisoners. All that just standing there with toes curled into the damp earth of high lonely lands, listening to rumours on the wind, gives a tree plenty of time to think and get Ideas and form Opinions and, if you want my opinion, become a little cantankerous, a little set in their ways and, sometimes, in the case of our 1998 tree*, a little murderous (attempted anyway). But pitting tree ‘gainst housewife is an unfair fight. The housewife wins every time.

*

Our Christmas tree ritual goes something like this: The ProblemHusband sits on the sofa and observes, with his keen eye for detail, his remarkable ability to sit, and his astonishing facility with cheese-straws, egg-nog and beer. He is mainly there in an advisory capacity: “I knew that wasn’t going to work” type thing.

My dad and I erect and decorate the tree and drink wine on an empty stomach because we were too excited about trimming the tree to bother with dinner.

We say :”The topmost point of the tree is bald and too long and spindly to support the star, lets cut it down a bit to make it a more pleasingly shaped tannenbaum.”

The ProblemHusband says: “Oh no you don’t! That is the twig that makes the difference between an 8-foot and a 7-foot tree. That twig is the most expensive twig on the tree.”

We discuss it.

We end up not chopping it off because we know that’s how the ritual goes. Instead we fashion an Eiffel Toweresque arrangement of green plastic cable-ties to support the star. We are pleased with our work and engineering when this is done.

Next, after Trouble (the Problem Cat) has eaten and sicked up several gobs of tinsel, I, as tradition demands, put her in another room until we’re finished. This is just as well because it is about then that I break a glass ornament causing wicked little splinters of glass to shoot everywhere and especially those bits of floor that the children and cat like to walk on/lick/eat fluff off.

“Phew,” I usually say, “It was a piece of luck I put Trouble away just then!”

Then commences the pantomime of the lights. A pantomime complete with a tipsy, rosy-cheeked Dame (me), A chorus line (my father) and some enthusiastic audience participation (PH):

Us: They’ll work!
PH: Hohoh no they won’t!
Us: Oh yes they will!
etc.

followed by a swift run to the shops for another string, followed by the realization that the new string isn’t polarised like the strings it’s supposed to connect to, followed by recriminations about why didn’t I go to the proper shop, not the nearest one.

Furious nibbling on a cheese straw for a few minutes will calm me down as I contemplate the peace and spirit of the season. Some more wine helps tremendously at this point too. Very soon we are merry again. We remember the emergency lights we bought last week for just such an eventuality.

We bash on.

5 hours later our tree is splendid and we are all touched by its beauty and warm glow. Feeling secure and sentimental in the knowledge that each actor played their role in our ritual to his and her utmost, we release the cat and retire for the evening to await the newer Part 2 of the Christmas tree ritual.

Part 2

The girls get up, are surprised, are rapt at the spectacle of Christmas tree; we are enchanted with their round little faces and eyes and their round little mouths going Oh!. They put their own special decorations on a bit of the tree I’ve saved for that and, while I go to the kitchen to make breakfast, they and the cat, with whom they’ve been in devillish cahoots since birth, pull off all the carefully arranged ornaments (Not too much gold together! Space baubles evenly with ornaments! Separate the nutcracker pair adequately! etc.) on the lower three branches. In dismay but little real surprise, I discover the wreckage.

We talk. I reason with them. I tell them I know how tempting it is to touch all the sparkly lovely things. And then I tell them not to or Santa won’t come. Thus starts Part 2b of the Christmas tradition, the weaponization of Santa, for the season.

Part 2b. The weaponization of Santa.

It has become my custom in December to advise the girls when I don’t think Santa will be happy about them not eating vegetables, for example. I wield him like a jolly blunt object when the air is thick with mutiny or civil war. I say that he has elves everywhere – behind the curtains, in the fridge – reporting back to a great gingerbread computer at the North Pole, and that the Naughty Or Nice List (which he’ll check twice) is being updated constantly. I tell them daddy and I have to file our own paperwork with Santa containing a general report on behaviour (amongst other things, I add mysteriously.) I look my own dear children in the eye and tell them we can’t lie to Santa because 1. he’s Santa, and 2. mummy and daddy don’t tell lies anyway, so Nice is really the way to go to avoid a great silvery “Naughty” sign above our chimney on Christmas Eve.

I don’t care if this is wrong of me.

* This year’s tree is a more docile one. I think they’re breeding them for dumb acceptance these days, and giving them Paxil in their MiracleGrow.

** I am aware I began a paragraph with a “But” but, really, my purposes were served and I find myself unable to care about this either. For the moment. Another day might see me clawing the skin off my face and wailing in an inner, non-literal, but nonetheless real and anguished way, whilst appearing to any observer to be sitting calmly in front of the screen. But not this day.