What Is The Tradition For Christmas Decorations?

Who gets to do what to the tree?

Christmas was a big thing for us when I was small — a really big thing. We would count it in from 3 months distant, wishing our time away as small children do.

12 weeks! I can’t wait 12 weeks!

Yes, but in 6 weeks there’ll only be 6 weeks to go.

Brilliant! Problem solved. When it was as good as Christmas, and it was an unreachable 12 weeks away, 6 weeks felt possible. I would announce my countdown to the halfway point anywhere and any when.

Christmas. It’s only 4 weeks!

I wonder how many harassed parents on the crowded buses of my youth heard that and were brought to the edge of cardiac arrest.

What I don’t remember is a schedule for decorations. A tree arrived every year and was decorated with great care — the first time anyway. Then it was pulled down by the cat, redecorated, pulled down … and so on, until the finished product was a mish-mash of tinsel and decorations shoved on any old how, because what was the point of bothering just to have the cat bring the whole lot crashing down? When it was suitably lacklustre, the cat would leave it alone.

Our cat was a large male tabby, “rescued” as a feral kitten from bleak winter moorland in the Peak District National Park. He became the scourge of every creature on our street. He chased dogs, caught birds out of the air, and was a voracious ratter and mouser. All that was really rescued when he moved in with us was the wildlife on that moorland.

We went away for Christmas — the whole family and the cat — to stay at our grandmother’s. Christmas was shared with aunts, uncles, and cousins. Snow arrived in time to carpet the garden on Christmas morning — can it really have done that every year? That’s how I remember it.

The excitement was all in the occasion, the build-up, the snow, the tree, the decorations, fresh grapefruit for breakfast, and of course, presents. But presents were also-rans in the list, no better and no worse than the magic of tinsel, the smell of fresh grapefruit. With all those cousins and aunts and uncles to buy for, they were never expensive, but that wasn’t the point. Wrapped presents were just part of what made Christmas special.

Decorations appeared magically on Christmas morning, but when did they come down? I suspect the last family to leave took down the ones at our grandmother’s, or if not, she’d have got someone in to do it. She certainly wouldn’t have done it herself. She had a tree too, tinselled and decorated to within an inch of its life. Our cat never laid a claw on it. Large and fierce he might have been, but at my grandmother’s house, he was the embodiment of purring good manners.

He knew nothing of how a traditional feline should behave, but he was a clever cat. He knew when he’d met his match.

With thanks to Ellie Jacobson for sparking the idea with this prompt …

… and then for subverting the direction of it with this story:

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