We have two Christmas trees in our house. One is a lovely 7ft artificial tree that we spent rather a lot of money on over ten years ago. It stands in our dining room, and it is my ‘posh’ tree; it is decorated exclusively in red and gold baubles, with red ‘cranberry’ style lights, and it looks magnificent against a dark red wall in the dining room.
Then there is the small tree, which we put up in our living room. This tree is very different.
My husband and I bought this tree just a couple of months after we were first married in 1999. At this stage in our lives, we had been together seven years, having met as students, but due to career paths and financial restraints, this was actually the first time we had been able to live together in our own home. I was working in the bookshop, a job I loved but which wasn’t the best paid work in the world. Lloyd was still halfway through writing his Phd and taking on any casual work he could get to make ends meet. To put it bluntly, we were broke. What very little money we had left after the wedding had gone into furnishing the flat we were renting. Having lived separately in various different furnished rental accommodation or parental homes, we had had to buy everything from scratch: a bed, a sofa, a table, wardrobes and drawers, and most essential of all, bookcases for our large collection of books. Luckily, it was a very small flat. Like a traditional newly-married couple from a 1960s sitcom, we were starting out together with hardly a penny to our name and we were extremely happy, looking forward to our first Christmas together as husband and wife.
I had some Christmas tree decorations from previous years. When space had allowed, I had bought real Christmas trees and so still had a small collection of baubles. But the tiny flat had no room for a real Christmas tree. And besides, we couldn’t have afforded one. At that point, we didn’t even have a car on the road. It looked like our first Christmas together would be without a tree.
Our tiny flat was in a village a few miles outside Stratford-upon-Avon. We were both working in shops in Stratford, and having no car meant we were travelling to and from work by bus. When our shifts finished at the same time, we would meet up and catch the bus home together. The bus left from outside Woolworths at about 5.45pm. And it was standing outside Woolworths one evening, probably on some dreary evening in December, that we saw Christmas trees for sale in the window. There was a range of sizes, from very small to quite tall. They weren’t the best quality, but they were cheap. We were early for the bus, and the shop was still open. Suddenly, it seemed to me that we couldn’t let Christmas go past without a Christmas tree. And they were extremely cheap. I suggested to Lloyd that we could just about afford the smallest tree, which was under £5. We dashed into the shop, and carried away by the spirit of Christmas, we actually bought the second smallest – a 4ft tree for the grand total of £6.49. Then we took our Christmas tree home on the bus and filled our tiny flat with Christmas cheer.
We did two more Christmases in the tiny flat. Although small, it was a lovely flat, and the village was a nice place to live. Our financial situation remained precarious for a couple of years, but in 2001, Lloyd finished his Phd and finally got the job in academia he had been hoping for. It meant we were in a position to buy a house. In the autumn of 2002, we got extremely lucky and found a 1930s semi in a nearby town that was being sold cheap because of the amount of work that needed doing to it. We still had hardly any money, but back then, mortgages were easier to come by, and with a little help from our families, we were able to buy the house. We moved out of the tiny flat and into the house in December 2002. On moving day, Lloyd went across to the house with our belongings (the bed, the sofa, the books and the bookcases) while I stayed in the flat to take care of the final clearing and cleaning. I didn’t get to the house until evening, by which time it was dark. To my surprise, the little Christmas tree was up in the window, welcoming me with coloured lights to my new home. My very kind mother-in-law had made the decision to put it up for us. The rest of the house was a mess. There were no curtains, no carpets, the kitchen was still being built and everything was in boxes, but at least it was Christmas. As we began the slow job of unpacking, I was beginning to wonder if the unusual sickness I was feeling might be the beginnings of the pregnancy we had been trying for. On Christmas Eve, I did the test and it came back positive.
Over the next few years, Christmas came and went, bringing the usual flurry of change each year. Our family went from two to five. The house expanded. An extension meant the addition of a dining room, leading to another hurried purchase of a new, larger dining table in time for Christmas dinner. It also meant space for a bigger Christmas tree. A real one for a few years, the big, floor-to-ceiling type, until we began to worry about the environmental impact of real trees and so invested in the beautifully realistic-looking artificial tree. But the little tree still had its place in the living room, still decorated with the old ornaments we had first adorned it with. These were supplemented to over the years with additions made by the children at playgroups, preschool, school, Brownies and Cubs etc. Every year, the children insist that the old, tattered home-made or school-made decorations still go on. There are so many now that every branch is loaded, the ornaments fighting for space. It is probably just as well; this bright raiment hides how bare and thin the branches underneath have become. Each year, it moults more and more of its green, tinselly leaves, making as much mess on the carpet as a real tree. Last year, I considered buying a new one, something more plush and less messy. But I’m glad I didn’t.
The children are no longer small but they still decorate the tree for me. These days, they love it for the nostalgia and sentiment. I wonder if they realise just how significant it is in the story of our family. This year Lloyd and I celebrated our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Which means it is also twenty-five years ago since we dashed into Woolworths to buy a cheap Christmas tree before the bus came. No wonder our little tree is looking a bit worse for wear. But we wouldn’t dream of changing it. It will always have a place in our home.
M J Schofield 