Features and blogging

The tree is up, but this year we only foraged as far as the loft to get one. Our fake tree is a beautiful creation from my husband’s teen years in Florida in the early 80s. I don’t mind unfurling its folded branches instead of propping up a spruce, because the memories that emerge when we put up the tree are so precious.
The first time we took ownership of our pretend tree was in Singapore; we had parcelled it into the container with all of our other worldly goods. The original owner (my father-in-law) was happy to pass it on to us and I didn’t think we’d ever use it, being a die-hard real pine snob.
But as we headed towards our first tropical yule, the idea of popping to a garden centre for a Norwegian spruce seemed a little unlikely. Unpacking the monster made sense and it didn’t let us down.
The fake family pine is a Goliath of a structure: if you’re going to pretend, you may as well do it convincingly, and our amazing eight-footer really looks the part. We can angle the branches into realistic shapes, and once it’s covered in lights and balls no one can really tell. In its twilight years it’s even started dropping tiny bits of plastic pine for the cats to eat, just like real trees do.
Best of all is how, every time we dress it, I’m whizzed Dickens-style through a misty lens for a sepia-tinted visit to all our fake-tree Christmases past:
• I’m standing in the kitchen doorway in Marlow as my mother-in-law lies snoozing on the sofa. Her three-year-old grandson is hanging baubles on the big tree with Grandpa. Although jolly Christmas music is blaring from a radio, there is an underlying sadness in the room because the person on the sofa has only a few days remaining. We chuck on extra baubles that year.
• I’m standing in another kitchen doorway, this time in Singapore, as my nine-year-old hops up and down a ladder to reach the top of the big tree. He’s wearing a lightweight school uniform and the air con is working double hard to cool him down, danglers wobbling slightly in the fake breeze.
• A year later and I’m handing out Cold Storage mince pies as tree lights twinkle a welcome to my expat neighbours. Our tree is rivalling the one in the condo function room for size so I have thrown the patio doors open and put on a festive lunch. Communal events pull people together at times like these.
• Then there’s the year my sister spent Christmas with us at the outlaws in Marlow, and the one where she came out to Singapore. All those times we sighed in satisfaction at how the tree managed to pull off a perfectly passable replication of a real pine.
These precious virtual visits match the eclectic contents of my bauble box in emotional value. I’m the proud owner of baubles from such exotic places as Cairo, Florida, Beijing, Cornwall, Prague and Bali, each one gifted, collected, found, treasured. This year I’ve gone all-out random so an enormous Singapore sphere hangs beside a stuffed cockroach, just under a ceramic Neptune. To his left is a knitted cat, and a few branches down from that is a single carved glass icicle (more of a work of art really) from my late mother’s collection. Candy canes mingle with ceramic Balinese hearts and The Year of the Horse must have been super-sociable, because I count at least eight of them cantering around our fake forest. At the bottom of everything bobs a shiny blue ball with ‘John’ painted in neat American cursive.
I can go matching if I try: my festive sets include gold cherubs, pink disco balls, the full Chinese Zodiac, metal bells, two glass snow globes and 20 small coloured glitter balls. This year I’ve emptied out the lot onto those fake spines.
There is one last tree tradition to fulfil. Mum bought a new bauble each year, but this time I’ve already had a donation from a friend, who tucked a wooden star into her Christmas card. I know both grandmas would have loved it.
There is always a moment of sadness that we won’t get the heady scent or the bespoke tilt of a fresh tree in a muddy pot. But you have to weigh it up against the relief of not having to drag a sad half-bald pine down to a wintry car park burial site in early Jan, lobbing it on top of all the other half-bald pines. I had a little cry last year. Re-boxing our memories back into the loft will be a much softer start to our new year.