Themed Trees

As Christmas is fast approaching, I spent my weekend doing what I’m sure many of you, many people across the country, and probably across the world did. I went and got my Christmas tree.

The whole experience, from the wellies in the mud and the scarf around your neck to those big metal cylinder things that they put your tree through to get it netted up, is to me, an essential part of Christmas.

I love decorating my tree. I love going into the loft and getting the big box down and rediscovering all those treasures that you forgot about all year. But there is one thing that I cannot stand, cannot abide. I hate themed trees.

Obviously not to offend anyone, but I think that themed trees are an example of everything that’s wrong with the world. They show a lack of creativity, a lack of family history, and a lack of imagination.

Germany is credited with starting the Christmas tree tradition in the 16th century. Some Christians brought decorated trees into their homes and some built Christmas pyramids of wood and decorated them with evergreens and candles if wood was scarce.

 

For such a long time, we have been using our skills and innovation to create beautiful, individual and original trees.

 

So why did someone think one day: Oh you know what’s a good idea? Lets get baubles all in the same colour, size and design, and sell them to everybody in the world so that all trees to exactly the same!

 

So I am making a stand. Sure, a nice themed tree with red and green baubles might look nice in a shopping centre, a hotel or Rockefeller Ice Skating rink, but not in someone’s home.

 

When I see a tree with perfectly spaced baubles and a colour scheme matching the rest of the room, it just make me wonder: where’s the personal touch? Where are those little things, the little memories that make a house a home, that make a life?

 

In my family, we have a tradition whereby every year we go out and each family member choses a new decoration for the tree or the house. And when you unpack them, it’s like, oh yeah, I picked that one when I was 5! And that one was from when I was 7!

 

And of course, probably about 75% of our decorations are the appalling homemade decorations from reception that your parents display, pride of place, as though they are the most beautiful, precious things ever. I have lost count of the number of things that we have on our tree at home. We’ve got the peg people, the cone angles, the decorated pine cones, the hanging Hama beads, the pom poms, the painted rocks, you name it, we have it. It’s all too Pinterest for words.

 

We have decorations from holidays abroad to remind us of the good times. We have the decorations that were given to us by friends and family to remind us of them. We have those good oldies which have been in the family for years and years and years.

 

But a themed tree… it has none of this. None of the memories, none of the sentimentality. Our tree is probably the tackiest thing you’ve ever seen in your life, but it means something to us. Every single decoration has a memory, a story. That is what Christmas is about.

 

And themed trees… those empty, cold heartless trees… that is the opposite of what Christmas is.