Tree hunt leaves me needled

THE Christmas tree thing is giving me status anxiety.

What does a tree signify? Why all the options? You might think the choice is simple — fake or real — but it’s more complicated than that. I’d like a white plastic tree. Think Barbarella — white shiny plastic covered in ice blue lights. You have got to be effing kidding us, the children exclaim. White plastic? Are you on drugs? Sadly, no. Drugs might not make this whole Christmas tree thing go away, but they would certainly make it not matter. Saddled as I am with tyrannical Christmas traditionalists, I’m instructed to get on with the purchase of a normal tree. And make it snappy. “Last year our Christmas tree was a big palm leaf branch with some battery operated fairy lights that broke,” says the older one piteously to her friends, who stare at her, appalled.

She doesn’t bother adding that the palm leaf branch had been carefully cut by me and my Swiss Army knife from a coconut tree outside the door of her very own tropical beach hut, where she spent Christmas Day splashing about in a warm dolphin-filled ocean while feasting on mangoes. No. All she remembers is that our improvised Indian Christmas tree was the wrong breed.