Pines and Needles

J was seething with jealousy over my mooch around Fortnums last week. He got even more wound up when I told him about their Christmas decorations that I mentioned in my last blog. You see, I managed to marry man with something of a short circuit: he likes shopping, loves entertaining, and at Christmas time he gets more excited than a five year old.
Come mid-November he's ready to buy a tree, but I usually manage to keep him calm until the first weekend of December. Then it's off to Battersea Park in London on Saturday morning for a long - and hopefully frosty - walk. We end up in the Chelsea car park alongside the Thames, where Pines and Needles (http://www.pinesandneedles.com/) have set up a fabulous selection of fresh cut trees to choose from.
The two strapping young brothers who run it, grow their lush trees on their farm in Scotland and donate 10% of their profits to charity. Not only can their kilted team deliver and decorate your tree, but they also dispose of them via recycling in January. This all has huge appeal for your average time-constrained adult not bothered about baubles. Not J however - who loves their trees, but once he's picked the perfect pine, is fully and solely committed to Project Decorate (I'm allowed on board, but only in an advisory capacity...)
He has a few rules, I've noticed. Number one: no tinsel (he says it's the Christmas tree equivalent of white socks in black loafers.) Number two: no coloured lights (same reason as Number one.) Number three: no popcorn (I got this idea from the film Kramer vs Kramer - threaded popcorn on a string! A snack and ornament in one! J disagreed...)
He'd like to use real candles in the tree but this sets off all my alarm bells, so it's been vetoed.

I would assert more creative authority on Project Decorate, if he didn't produce something so exquisite every year - all by himself. With white lights and a controlled amount of colour, it always looks simple and enchanting - and never tacky.
Five Decembers ago, we went to Vienna for a long weekend, which coincided with the city's Christmas market. Log cabins were stuffed with unique handcrafted ornaments made from straw, blown glass and carved wood (...how they whittle a miniature nativity scene on the inside of walnut shell, I'll never know.)
Fortfied with gluhwein (their lethal mulled wine) we bought in bulk. As a result, our tree looks less commercial, and somehow more meaningful.
It's depressing to think Coca Cola cemented the image of the plump and pudgy, red-suited Santa Claus that's now synonymous with our Christmas. But the rest of Europe still revere St Nicholas, in red robes with his long white beard. Legend has it that he secured marriages for two poor girls without dowries, by throwing bags of gold through their window one night. The gold landed in their stockings that were hanging by the fire to dry, spawning the Christmas Eve tradition. Across much of Europe, gift giving in the name of St Nicholas takes place on December 6th, so that Christmas itself can be devoted to birth of Jesus.
When our extended families get together on the 25th, we always sing carols around the piano, to get us into the true spirit of Christmas. Now, singing...that's something J is hopeless at.

Scarlett Willow