Bucket, string and some aspirin....

I'm alone in my lounge right now apart from a squat fir tree propped up in the corner of the room, encased in mesh like a bank robber with his face in a stocking. He has a wooden base next to him which will eventually support him, once we 'let him out of the bag'.

I carried him home on my shoulder this very cold winter's evening. My breath tumbled in front of my face, and my fingers stung with cold despite being wrapped in gloves.

When I was a kid Dad would go out onto the farm and find a festive looking pine tree branch to become our Christmas tree. More recently, Mum has gotten someone to deliver a suitable branch to the house. Usually it is enormous. As in about ten feet of 'enormousness'.

Our Christmas tree 'Herbert' will (hopefully) sit nicely on his wooden base.

Mum props the pine tree in a bucket, goes out into the paddock to get the appropriately sized rocks, then fills the bucket with water and aspirin to keep tree alive for the next two weeks. Then she will string it up in some elaborate fashion so it doesn't topple over on some unsuspecting relative.

Herbert au naturale

This week we will go out and buy decorations so Herbert feels suitably like a cross dresser whilst he sits in the corner of our room for the festive season.

Dressed up Herbert

Every year Mum will go to the hall cupboard and pull down the same cardboard box of Christmas decorations she has had since I can remember. She will pull out the toilet roll covered in crepe paper to look like a cracker; the angel cut out coloured in with crayon I did when I was five; and of course the string of Christmas lights she has had since she married my Dad. Over 40 years ago. Some of the bulbs have blown. But they still work.

The Bramwell Xmas Tree 2008

I remember once when I was about ten, sneaking into the lounge in the middle of the night and sitting underneath one of those big pine branches. I sat there amongst the piles of wrapped underwear from various aunties. All the lights were out except those persistent coloured tree lights. And even though by that time I knew there was no Father Christmas; and I knew the small, soft parcel from Auntie Colleen was underwear, Christmas was magical all the same.