Wait until next year

Well, at the weekend we finally got the Christmas tree up and decorated. So it is beginning to look a lot more like Christmas in my household.

We have a nice mix of old decorations and new, and have purged enough decorations over the past couple of years so that the tree looks vaguely coherent and considered, rather than a mess of all sorts of shapes and colours. That sort of mess has its charms, but I quite like aspiring to something tasteful too, at least this year. Maybe next year we’ll go for the full-on tat approach and cover it in mini-disco-balls and eighty shades of tinsel.

I bought some new lights as the old lights were only half working, as is traditional, but in the sort of annoying way where the bottom half of the tree was lit up and the top was in darkness. And it didn’t seem fixable. Or there were only so many tiny lightbulbs we were filling to check. So, this year we went for some of those funky LED lights with several settings. Some of the settings look capable of bringing on a seizure, but there are a couple that are lovely and twinkly but also pretty laid-back, fading in and out. It is kind of therapeutic looking at the tree.

I suppose the tree fits our mood this year. We’re looking forward to a peaceful break and to spending a good deal of time at home. The tree certainly feels homely and has made this old grouch feel a fair bit more festive too.