Growing up, I was lucky enough to live on a rural 5-acre property with a small pine forest as our back garden and a much larger, slightly spooky commercial pine plantation behind that.

So for my first eighteen years, obtaining Christmas trees was not an issue. My Dad would walk out the back and chop down a likely-looking specimen for us to decorate. But once I left home, it wasn’t so easy to find the perfect Christmas tree.

Should I search for a real one with its heady aroma of pine oils that scream ‘Christmas Time!’ but horrible habit of dropping needles on the living room floor before the entire tree browns and shrivels and ends up as an unloved discard on the front footpath in the anonymous big city? Or—quelle horreur—invest in an artificial tree?

#107 Explore Christmas Trees and Decorations

Without children, it was easy for me to do nothing for years. And years. But in 2021, with house guests arriving over Christmas, it was time to rethink the whole Christmas tree shebang.

What decorations are in vogue these days?

I began by checking out the council-inspired and commercial offerings in my district:

Tolerable, but hardly avante-garde or wildly beautiful.

In fact, over in the US, a Fox News Christmas tree in Manhattan, (described by Fox anchors as the ‘All-American Christmas Tree’) so annoyed somebody with its ‘ho-hum’ appearance that it was set alight:

There’s always the problems with storage for decorations that are only used for a couple of weeks a year, so I decided any type of large artificial tree was out of the question.

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External house decorations are fun to view on an evening drive:

But climbing up a ladder at my age would be just silly, so house decorations were out.

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Then I came across a delightful Christmas tree in the neighbourhood made out of palm tree bark:

And friends of mine have made a clever ‘twig’ Christmas tree:

Top marks for artistic merit and clever design for these two.

I finally settled on a small [fake!] tree for the hallway pedestal, jazzing it up with some mood lighting and bundles of gaily wrapped presents at its base.

So happy days and may the New Year treat you well.