Tormented by Tinsel

Is there any such thing as a Good Taste Guide to decorating a Christmas tree? If so, I’d like to purchase a few copies as stocking fillers for both my (adult) children.

My son and daughter and their families were coming to our house to decorate the Christmas tree. As neither have space for a real tree, we’d all decided it would be fun to get the four grandchildren together to do ours.

My husband, Martin, bought the biggest tree he could find and set it up in the corner of the living room. I retrieved the box of Christmas ornaments from the back of the linen cupboard.

Both families arrived at the same time, four little ones running up our path squealing with joy. They were followed by four parents carrying tubs overflowing with — oh no! Tinsel.

“We thought you could use some help in this area,” said Max as he headed inside.

When Max and Amy were growing up, I’d tried to instil the less-is-more approach to decorating, but to them, more was definitely more. If my taste could be described as minimalist, their’s was maximalist. It’s true that I recoil from glitter and tinsel like oil from water, a gene I inherited from my mother. A gene I wish I’d managed to pass on to Max and Amy.

When they were young, the tussle would begin from the moment the tree was in position. While I was hanging my lovely, unpainted wooden angels, purchased in Denmark before the kids were born, Max was busily wrapping the tree in the one strand of thick gold tinsel we owned. It flopped over the branches like a fat, ugly caterpillar.

I’d point out the simplicity and beauty of my angels, but to Max and Amy these plain figures just epitomised my complete lack of flair.

I recall with nostalgia, the Christmas tree of my childhood: a dead branch, dropped from a tree in our garden. My mother painted it white, propped it up in a bucket, then hung four or five plain gold baubles from it. We had that tree for years. I didn’t appreciate it at the time, in fact it was a source of pain and embarrassment when friends visited, but my mother stuck to her guns.

Ultimately, either by genetic predisposition or indoctrination, I began emulating my mother’s style.

But as children, Max and Amy were having none of it. It didn’t help that each year garden decorations in the suburbs became increasingly elaborate. Sleighs rested on rooftops and reindeers outlined in fairy lights grazed on front lawns. Fake snowflakes sprayed on windows was an exercise in understatement. It all made my home-made wreath of painted holly for the front door look rather primitive.

Max used to claim he was the only one in his class without blinking lights around the front door and certainly the only one with stupid unpainted wooden angels on his Christmas tree. Annoyingly, Amy would chime in with her own stories. Her friend, apparently, had a sleigh that really flew.

“I find that very hard to believe,” I said.

But she was sticking to her story. Considering the yarn I’d been spinning about Santa, I was in no position to cross-examine her, so I let it drop.

Martin had just wanted to re-create the storybook Christmas tree of his German childhood, which was covered in real candles they lit each evening. But try that in Australia and you’re likely to burn down an entire suburb.

I watch on now as the grandchildren, aged between three and five, tangle themselves in gold tinsel and search for space on the tree to hang another pink or purple bauble. My unpainted angels remain untouched in their box.

I realise the battle is lost. Unless I want to become redundant to the whole operation, I must embrace my children’s and grandchildren’s Christmas spirit. I help them splash colours around that make my head spin. Tinsel caterpillars and gaudy baubles adorn our tree, as do elves, candy canes and, yes, blinking lights.

So overburdened is the tree, I’m not sure it will still be upright by Christmas Day, but okay, I get it, it’s about creating memories. And maybe Mum’s minimalist gene will reappear in generations to come.