War of the Baubles

Its Christmas time, expect plenty of window displays all full of snow and jumpers, lots of cards in the post and Christmas themed food being stored in cupboards. Not to mention all the magazine and television Christmas themed issues and episodes.

On the weekend we put up the tree, a tradition I am sad to say has become smaller by the year. I don't mean the tree, I just mean the enthusiasm. But there is one element that never changes about this tradition and usually and strangely makes things seem more Christmassy.

When my sister and I were younger, in the days where shops didn't decorate their shop windows at least until late November, (showing our ages, sorry sis) we used to decorate our tree, which is probably older then both of us. We were helped by our Dad.

He is king of Christmas decorations. He really gets into the spirit, until the spirit becomes a perfectionist maniac. Every year he would buy at least one new box of baubles even though we had tons to spare. As we got older, it was thought that my sister and I would take over tree duties and he did the rest. But of course this was not so. He would either take over and add more baubles or he would actually rearrange the decorations, including, when we did do it, the tree chocolates.

Its a running joke now that the tree decorations is our Dad's thing. Last year though, I took a stand, I would take over the tree. I was proud of it and I didn't even need to use half of all the baubles, mostly red ones. But sure enough my Dad interfered, he added a few more and kept saying 'nice tree, more baubles though'. This year was the same, except the only decoration that did go up this year was the tree. I put even less up, it looks better and I let my Dad put the Three Kings decorations up, I know he enjoys it.

This is what the tree looks like. But everyday my Dad says, "More baubles? I think the tree needs more baubles". I would not be surprised if one morning the tree is completely different.