First on the list is a tree. Back at home, my parents have several Christmas trees, commissioned from local craftsmen, fashioned from wire and beadwork or carved from driftwood. They don’t need decorating, you just sort of set them up and admire them. They’re beautiful and unique, but growing up, I longed for the smell of evergreen filling the house.
From The Christmas Bucket List
Buying a real tree might be first on the list for Isobel, the heroine of The Christmas Bucket List, but the truth is that I’m more of a fake tree girl myself. Of course, I adore the smell of fresh pine, and they always look so pretty, but I hate seeing sad, dying trees abandoned in the streets after Twelfth Night. It reminds me of that Friends episode where Phoebe tries to get all the ugly trees in the tree lot to fulfil their Christmas destiny instead of facing the woodchipper.
The other reason is that in my family, we have a (fake) tree that has been around FOREVER, and is very much part of the whole holiday tradition for me. When I was just a small girl, my dad bought it from a company that usually sold trees to shops for display, because it was the only place he could find one that was big enough to hold the gigantic collection of decorations and baubles that came from both sides of the family. We have glass balls that my grandparents brought with them from Italy, that have been hung for generations, little angels from my mother’s mother, and of course loads of decorations that we’ve bought ourselves over the years. The end result is pretty amazing – even if it does take hours and hours to do. Underneath it all, there’s a traditional Italian presepio, with the full nativity scene as well as a village teeming with people, a lake, mountains and tiny houses.
The tree never goes up before 16 December, when the whole family spends the day pulling boxes out of storage, sorting through boxes packed with sawdust and cotton wool, and trying to find gaps for just one more wooden santa or Venetian glass icicle. When it’s done, it’s absolutely magical – even if it doesn’t actually smell of evergreen.
Image credit: Bon Appetit Magazine (stylist: Susie Theodorou)