I much prefer an artificial Christmas tree

Especially my incredible homemade one last year.

Dec 20, 2023

For an audio version (and to hear me taking on the voice of a distraught tree) click here. This is just for paying subscribers.

Here’s the moment which for me, truly encapsulates the magic of Christmas. Taking the boxed tree out of the attic/cupboard/from under the bed, inserting it back into the base then gently bending the branches back out into a tree-like shape. Forget your carol singers, The Snowman, mulled wine and mince pies. This is Christmas!

I’ve tried to love a real Christmas tree. I know they are tasteful and smell nice and evoke a traditional, classy kind of festive cosiness. But I’m from an artificial tree background. And with very little pretence that it’s a real tree. We had one for a good few years which was silver. My parents have now got an electric one with built-in lights. More than the fact that they have a TV remote control each, they are living the dream with this tree.

However, my partner Tom is from a real Christmas tree background and he loves a festive conifer. We’re from opposite sides of the big divide like Lady Chatterley and the gamekeeper and Prince William and Kate Middleton.

But because I’m this incredible, flexible, accommodating girlfriend, I tried a real tree for a few years. And I hated it. Anything that involves me having to get the hoover out of the cupboard more than once a week is not welcome in my home. Mainly because when it comes to putting the hoover back, the cupboard denies all knowledge that it ever fitted in there before.

But it’s not only the needles dropping. I just don’t like having a tree in my house. They don’t belong there. It’s like when you see old sofas and mattresses in someone’s garden. It’s all wrong. It’s as normal to have a tree inside your home as a river or a boulder.

But what I hate most of all about a real tree is having to get rid of it after Christmas. You invite this tree into your house, make a massive fuss of it by decorating it, it’s the centre of the whole Christmas present thing and then when it’s all over, it’s turfed out.

In one of my real tree years, we’d had one that wouldn’t be described as perfect. It was very bottom-heavy and I think Tom had felt sorry for it as it was a bit misshapen compared to the other trees. Either that or it was cheaper. But despite the hoover situation, I actually became really fond of this imperfect tree.

One evening in the new year, I was walking home late after work and about one street away from mine, I saw my tree. I’d recognise it a mile off. If I had better eyesight that could see a mile away. What had clearly happened was that Tom had taken the tree down and having little faith in our local council garden waste collection scheme, had decided to dump it a street away so it wasn’t in our front garden for the next two months.

As I got closer to my tree, I was starting to feel terrible. We’d spent the whole of Christmas together. Apart from when I went away for a week over Christmas. But apart from that, the whole Christmas together. I was the only family it knew. So I felt really sad seeing it on the street. But I was also thinking, isn’t what Tom has done flytipping and isn’t that illegal? So I had to blank it! I had to walk past it and pretend I didn’t know it. While it lay there, abandoned and all bottom-heavy on the cold winter streets. Watching me, the only family it had ever known, probably a mother figure to it, walk past without a word.

It had probably seen me coming and thought, “Oh thank you, thank you, there is a God! She’s come for me, she’s almost here, I’ll be in her arms, she’ll take me home! She’s here! What? She’s walking past. She didn’t even look at me. What did I do wrong? Why?”

I can’t go through the pain of this every year. And nor should the tree have to. And then someone told me that artificial trees can actually be better for the environment as long as you keep them for a minimum of ten years. And to that I say – no problem! Can you imagine me managing to throw away a tree that’s lived through even just five Christmases with me? I’d go mad from the imagined screams coming from the outdoor bin.

But here’s the most environmentally friendly option of all. Make your own. Last Christmas I stayed in an Airbnb with no tree. This didn’t feel very festive so we decided to improvise one. With a clothes horse and some tinsel and fairy lights.

As you can imagine it looked amazing. But you don’t have to imagine. Here’s a photo. What a centrepiece to our Christmas! I couldn’t have loved it more.