This year we had a familiar argument in my household about when the Christmas tree should go up. My other half insists that it should be a late arrival, just a few days before Christmas ideally, whereas I would prefer to have the month of December as a lead up and infused with festive spirit, etc. In the end, because my mother was coming to visit, we decided that it would go up around the 14th or so of December.
That said, we had bought the tree several weeks before and I had been sitting outside in the garden so as not to spoil it. We dutifully put up the tree around the time that we had negotiated, at which point my other half declared that she hated the tree and that it was the ugliest tree she had ever seen, disgusting in form and obnoxious to behold. I thought this might be a passing fad, which she would get over. It was not. As the day went on, there were more and more frequent complaints about how we had got a terrible tree and we had a problem here.
Eventually I relented and in totally middle-class fashion just bellowed, “all right let’s get another tree then!” and so we pottered back to the garden center from where we had bought our tree in the first place. When we had gone two weeks earlier there were 2,000 or more trees in this garden center for sale. When we arrived on the 14th of December there were four left. Fortunately, one of these trees was just the ticket. It’s a dropping tree so it will now make a huge mess in the sitting room, but it smells good, it looks nice, and it does the job. Even better, the woman who runs the tree operation at this garden centre told us we could bring the old one back and that she would easily resell it and give us a refund! This was shocking. That said, we did at first try to give it away on Facebook locally to someone who can’t afford a tree, as we thought this might appease our sense of guilt at being so stuck up about how our tree looks. We had no success so we went back got a refund and I made a donation to Shelter.
I think the thing I can’t get over though is that by the 14th of December they had sold over 2,000 trees and had none left. There was a steady stream of people turning up looking disappointed that they could no longer buy a Christmas tree even though it was still nowhere near Christmas. The logic that was explained to us by the manageress of the garden centre was that people are buying more expensive non-drop trees so they want to put them up earlier so that they get their value for money out of the tree. I think also the generally immiserating conditions under which we live in the 21st century must play a role. Everybody just wants some festive cheer and to be able to forget about things for this month of the year and the tree is a crucial part of that.
In any case, everyone is happy now and it’s time to settle down for a festive film: Die Hard.