WE DON'T put up the tree until late in my house. While shops all over the country seem to be festooned with Christmas decorations from the end of the summer holidays, we never clear a space in the living room until a week before Christmas Day at the earliest. Christmas doesn’t properly start until the tree is there, and it has to be a real one, no matter how much hassle it may be. For me, the smell of a real tree is the smell of Christmas itself. Buying it is always the same with arguments about height, bushiness and symmetry, quickly cut short by the mud, the cold, and the realisation that we’re standing in a draughty tent when we could be inside with mulled wine and a mince pie. Getting the tree home is always the same too, desperately trying to fit it in the back of the car, half of it hanging out of the boot, whilst everyone is tickled and scratched by the needles it already seems to be shedding. Putting it up is the same every year as well, in fact, everything about it is the same, year after year, and that, of course, is the point . . . it’s tradition. It’s why we brave the dark of the attic every winter to try and win back our box of Christmas decorations from a giant spider’s web. It’s why we spend hours untangling yards of fairy lights, only to find out that they were all broken anyway. In the end we know it was all worth it, as we sit around the brightly lit tree, hung with all the decorations we’ve accumulated over the years, topped off with the angel my mum made, and truly enjoy the real heart of Christmas. | 
