Every year, since I was a child, I’ve spent Christmas fending off concerns from my friends about the fact I've never had a Christmas tree. I’m Jewish and, even though my family have always done stockings, presents and Christmas dinner growing up, my parents weirdly drew the line at getting a tree.
‘We can’t possibly, we’re Jewish,’ they’d say, while basting the turkey and wearing hats from our Christmas crackers. I try to explain their skewed logic to friends, but they’re always incredulous and act as though I’m deprived. ‘But… where do your presents go!’ they gasp, wide-eyed. ‘How come your family want to ban Christmas!?’ But this year, at the age of 31, I felt it was high time I saw what the fuss was about.
My boyfriend, Adrian, and I got our first house together recently, so now I finally have the space to rebel – although, when I told my parents I was rising up and throwing off the shackles of my youth they seemed more concerned about the fact I hadn’t sent them my present list yet.
When you get your first tree, where do you start? Adrian had one every year growing up and I’ve lived in shared houses with friends throughout my twenties, where we’ve thrown some tinsel over a plant we already had, but neither of us have had the honour of being chief tree-buyer/co-ordinator of a household before.
'We can’t possibly, we’re Jewish,’ they’d say, while basting the turkey and wearing hats from our Christmas crackers.
Firstly, we found getting the tree wasn’t easy. If you don’t have a car, how the hell do you get it home? We staggered down the street for 15 minutes, balancing the prickly beast on our shoulders and nearly taking people out as we went. But with every nod, smile or ‘Merry Christmas’ from passers-by, I felt smug to have slotted into this new, Christmassy club so easily, where it feels like we live in a Richard Curtis film - I almost expected someone to burst into song.
That was until we slumped it into our living room and realised neither of us had any decorations. I messaged some friends in a panic and they sprang to my needs. ‘I adore tacky, ostentatious things and love the “Christmas has thrown up/conceived an illegitimate lovechild with Joe Pesci from Home Alone,” look,’ said my friend Ash. ‘I have a handmade RuPaul on top of mine,’ she added. I learnt tinsel was a big no-no. Fi advised: ‘You don’t need to have a load of baubles at once – just start with one set.’ Emily told me: ‘My mum has been giving me decorations as part of presents for years. We also have a fair few decorations related to things we love and places we’ve been.’
She and my friend Annie said they had two trees at home: ‘A fun tree and a classy tree’. TWO trees! One was giving me heart palpitations. Wasn’t this supposed to be fun? In comparison to theirs, Adrian and I accepted our tree was going to look pretty pathetic. But over the next few days, we accumulated the odd chocolate decoration here and a set of fairy lights there. When things got desperate, I nicked some fluffy, carrot baubles with smiley faces on them off a table at work where people leave unwanted gifts.
It was all down hill from there. Like the reverse to Charlotte in Sex and the City - when she marks her final Christmas before converting to Judaism by poignantly decorating her last tree in July - I marked the momentous occasion by baulking at the price of a solitary bauble in John Lewis.
Maybe it’s the fact we haven’t built up a treasure trove of meaningful decorations yet, but the whole process felt rather anticlimactic and stressful. Perhaps, if you haven’t had the magic of growing up decorating a tree with your family, it just doesn’t work in adulthood.
But in true festive spirit, I’m staying hopeful that next year will be different – come back to me in five years and, who knows, maybe we’ll have a tree in every room and an offensive light display spewed across the front of our house. More likely… I’ll be on the sofa with a Baileys after throwing a piece of tinsel over one of our house plants.
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