Sunday 4th December

Where to start?  Well let’s go back to Putney and Grandma exhuming like an Egyptian Mummy her Christmas decorations from our storage boxes – and they were ancient, truly ancient.  Not that I had any idea of that, I was not in the habit of visiting other girls houses so had nothing to compare with.  The first thing to say is that they were all made of paper; I don’t remember any foil decorations in any of the shops we frequented.  Intricately cut and folded paper garlands that concertina-ed into almost nothing, but were frilly and ornate when pulled apart and hung up from corner to corner of the room.  Every year these were re-used and patched with sellotape when they broke, their colours faded so that the red became brown and the green was a dark muddy wishy-washy apology for green.  I added paper chains as we were taught how to make these at school, and the gummed paper could be bought in packs at Woolworths.  We also added to Grandma’s pre-war swags with crepe paper twists, in white and red and red and green and yellow and green.  My mother and I meticulously cut and twisted these carefully across the room, tying the ends together and adding a few balloons in bunches around the light shade.

One day when I was about eighteen I read an article on using natural materials for decorations, and painted a whole branch and twigs with white and gold enamel paints, you know, those little Humbrol tins they used to sell in model shops, and bought some long pointed purple and blue tear drop baubles to hang on it.  It looked so modern and stylish, even in our old-fashioned sitting room.  We always had holly too, and a real tree, which we would wedge in a galvanized bucket which was then hidden by crepe paper, but we never had lights, I think Grandma must have vetoed them either on grounds of cost or safety.

In the early nineties Edward and I bought our first artificial tree, but although having no dropping needles was a bonus, it took an age to assemble and pack away again each year, and each year too it looked sadder and sadder.  We had lights and glitter garlands and themed baubles, but something in me always hankered after the simpler old paper swags we used to have in Putney.  And one day in Liberty, in the days when they had an oriental Bazaar downstairs I picked up some Chinese paper lanterns and garlands, and even though Edward pulled a bit of a long face, we had an old-fashioned Christmas again.

Now, the shops are filled with shiny and garish plastic and foil, and lights of every description.  One even sees people decorating the complete outside of their houses with Father Christmas and his sleigh and Reindeer all lit up, like the Blackpool Illuminations – one wonders how they afford the electric bills. I prefer to just have a couple of discreet swags over the fireplace these days, and a wreath on the front door, and a small pre-lit artificial tree which stands on my table in front of the window.

It really is a chore getting them out, but somehow it doesn’t even feel like Christmas without some decorations.  I have asked my mother, but she thinks they were thrown out years ago, but I really wish I still had Grandma’s old sellotape-repaired and faded and jaded garlands to hang up again, I would really feel Christamassy then.