by Kate Keefe Originally published 11 December 2023, The Tablet
How many Christmas trees are you going to put up? Most people stick to one, because they are quite labour-intensive, and not cheap either. Some people put lights on a tree in their front gardens, which raises an interesting question : is that a Christmas tree, if it isn’t a Christmas tree?
They can also cause a majestic family row, with everyone convinced that their idea is the only correct traditional version (and it’s astonishing how memories can differ even within one family, even within twelve months…). We once had a fake tree because we were in a country where Christmas trees did not grow, but this caused so much hassle with the children that the following year we settled for a pointy tree, which wasn’t the real thing, but had at least grown, as this turned out to be the preferred option. We always have a slight tension between my desire to have one that I can actually get past, and a couple of the children’s yearning for one which touches the ceiling (and then where do you put the star?). I think the ceiling-scratching business is down to everything being bigger when you are little, and a desire to reproduce the past. But if you can’t be sentimental and nostalgic at Christmastime, when can you?
We all agree on not wanting it up too early. But that’s the family tree. When we were responsible for the ambassadorial residence in a couple of places, the rules had to be different, because you must have the Christmas tree up in good time for the children’s party, which always comes before the staff party. The embassy itself had a separate tree, but that was set up by the local staff, which occasionally led to interesting culture clashes.
Christmas trees come in all shapes and sizes: municipal, ecclesiastical, domestic and even personal, though the tiny ones seem disappointingly short-lived. I thought they would be like houseplants, but in fact they are more like that other short-lived joy, the Christmas poinsettia. When we were living in Africa we saw poinsettia trees, which were a wonderful combination of ideas, but alas they don’t travel. If you want a tiny tree for your desk or as a table centre, you’re probably better off with a fake tree or resigning yourself to it lasting only the Twelve Days (if you’re lucky).
Human love and even veneration for trees has been around probably since our earliest ancestors, and certainly since our earliest myths. The tree of life in Paradise Garden; the Norse legends have the World Tree, Yggdrasil. The Greeks had special nymphs for every single tree (dryads or hamadryads) and so do C.S.Lewis and JRR Tolkien. It’s easy to understand. Trees are bigger than us, live much longer than we do and can give us so much (shelter; warmth or coolness depending on the season; sometimes fruit, and always joy). Our Christmas trees are a latecomer in cultural terms, especially here, as opposed to Germany, but they belong to this much longer tradition of trees-with-meaning. Palm branches are much older than Christmas trees (and laurel wreaths older than the crown of thorns).
Once you have your tree, how do you decorate it? Christmas tree decorations seem to breed at least as fast as odd socks, and it’s always the favourites that get broken; but at least if something gets broken, I’m allowed to buy another one, whereas normally I try very hard to resist adding to the collection (this year I have succumbed only twice, to a needle-felted globe, because it felt appropriate, and an irresistible owl). For years we concentrated on unbreakable ones because of travelling and packing, so we have lots of wooden ones, mostly painted bright colours. Glass baubles are beautiful, but very accident-prone. My youngest brother gave us a lovely present some years ago. He got four red and four blue baubles and wrote the names of each of us in glitter calligraphy on them (blue for the boys and red for the girls). Every year I’m terrified we’re going to lose one, but fingers crossed, so far the collection is intact.
We have significant decorations we have been given over the years. We have a Christmas kiwi for my sister who lives in New Zealand; we have a star with a pearl centre in memory of a beloved cousin who died very young, given to us and all the family by his parents on the first Christmas afterwards. I think this is a beautiful and reverent way to keep someone’s memory green. We have little figures from all the places we have lived, and even from some we have only visited; we have all the usual angels and stars, and the slightly less usual Czech devils, bishops and chimney sweeps. Mary came back from Catalonia with some new decorations, but they are mostly lavatorial, however authentic and beloved in Catalonia, so not many make it to the tree. Naturally I have a small cloth teapot, decorated with buttons. The children all have their favourites, and I expect to lend them out (or indeed, pass them on) in due course, but at the moment they all live on top of my wardrobe.
We have candle-shaped lights, and even holders for real candles, thanks to a trip to Berlin, but we are nervous about using them indoors, so I might try giving them a brief outdoors moment of glory this year: still dangerous, but more containable. We prefer white lights, but fashions come and go over this, and nowadays you don’t even have to choose : my mother in her eighties bought a plug-in little Christmas tree which ran through the spectrum. Mummy was enchanted and horrified by it in equal measure.
We still have tinsel for our tree, and strings of tiny gold and red balls, but when I was little there was weird red paper fluffy ‘tinsel’ which I’ve never seen anywhere else except in old illustrations or vintage biscuit tins. My next brother down and I used to take charge of this and use it to festoon the family tree once everything else was on it, chanting ‘festoon festoon’ as we did so. After all, it’s the only time in the year when you get to use the word, so we made the most of it. I don’t know where the paper tinsel came from, but you see Victorian pictures of German Christmas trees with red loops festooning the branches. It became very manky over time and must eventually just have been thrown out, I imagine, but by then I must have left home (and so had my brother).
We have baubles of all shapes and sizes, but I have been fascinated by some I have seen this year in advertisements, shops, or supermarket magazines. Anything can be a bauble, and some enterprising people are trying to make them topical. So I have seen an air fryer bauble (this year’s exciting new gadget, presumably), and even an instant-picture camera bauble. I was surprised by that one, because we bought an instant-picture camera to take pictures of Rachel when we carried her off behind the Iron Curtain and away from her doting grandparents, so that we could put current snaps inside every letter. That means that they have been around for a long time; but apparently they are having a retro-revival, and are trendy enough to become a bauble. Our baubles are mostly classic shapes, but we also have a few bells and churches.
Having a large quantity of decorations means that you can edit them for a particular effect. We’ve done colour-themed trees for the official ones where it seemed appropriate, but the family tree is always fairly random, because you can’t leave something dearly-loved off simply because it’s not the right colour.
Sometimes a decoration is an unexpected window into other traditions. For years at home we had a (rather crudely-shaped) glass fish, greyish and hanging by its tail, with not much detail. We accepted this as normal. It had been my mother’s and was old. It was only once we spent a Christmas in Prague that I realised it must have been meant to be a carp. Every Christmas, the carp-sellers set up bathtubs in the town squares, and you buy your carp for Christmas Eve. They will kill it for you on the spot (the hammering is a distinctive part of the Christmas soundscape), or you take it home (like a goldfish from the fair), keep it in the bath (or something smaller on the balcony of your flat), and kill it yourself before cooking it for the celebration dinner on Christmas Eve. We didn’t much like carp, so we never bought one, but suddenly I understood where that sort of decoration came from, though I still have no idea how it had ended up in the English Midlands.
No family tree is complete without embarrassing decorations made by the children when they were little, and we have our fair share of those, though they don’t all come out every year. There’s only so much room, and the stars and angels tend to predominate (I like the musical angels best). There’s one thing I always make sure is on, however: a little twist of ivory ribbon, which I tuck around the side, as it’s not colourful or particularly Christmassy. It came from my wedding bouquet.
© Kate Keefe 2023
