Advent Calerndar IV

Most of us have Christmas trees, and many of us will be putting them up this weekend. In my family it always used to be that we would just try to put as much bling on the tree as possible, we would have glass balls (Ow err Mrs) we would have tinsel of many colours, we would have home made decorations, stars made from cardboard and aluminium foil and of course fairy lights.    I remember that the ones we had well into the 70s were like little coloured plastic lanterns with a simple white bulb inside.   There was always an angel on the top and of course it was always, always a real tree.

We children always wanted the biggest tree possible, Mum always wanted something smaller so there wasn't so much mess to clear up.   Dad tended to side with us youngsters so it tended to be down to which one of them actually bought the tree. I remember one year Dad coming home with a tree so big that we had to cut the top off to fit it into the house, very exciting for a six year old!

As I grew older my tastes changed and I started to embrace the idea of single colour decorations, I would actively try to be a bit artistic in my decorations, less bling and less colours, but there was still always and angel on the top.

Now I am a little more reflective in my choices. Yesterday I saw my wife decorating her Church tree, plan white fairy lights with red balls, and gold balls, the main thing that did strike me about the tree though was it's size.   At about 14 foot tall it is large, but it has a large space to occupy and looked just right.   In some way I now think that the scale of the tree to the room is just as important as the decoration of the tree itself

And what does all this reflection lead too? I don't know, I have yet to decide if I will have any decorations at all this year.   Last year I had only just moved into my flat, this year I will be doing some work on it over the holidays so I may not bother, the previous couple of years I limited myself to a tree, maybe I will manage a wreath, maybe a small tree, maybe nothing. We'll just have to wait and see.