The Great Christmas Tree Debate!

First things first, thankyou, thankyou, thankyou for all your kind comments, your support and your purchases. I really can't begin to tell you how much it has all meant to me. I could hug you all!

Now for the great Christmas tree debate, inspired by Nonnie's post about when to put the tree up. I know Gemma has done hers', but, what do you do? When does your tree go up?

When I was a child our tree was decorated on Christmas Eve and that is a tradition I have tried to more or less stick to. There is huge opposition from the rest of the family so I usually cave in and the boys decorate the trees maybe a couple of days before Christmas.

I buy real trees a week or so before Christmas and they stay outside until someone ventures into the loft to get the decorations. Real trees make one hell of a mess and then you have to cart them off to the dump when you have finished with them, or shred them or something.

Apparently they are the "green" option being "carbon neutral" or some such but I have to admit that an artificial tree is very tempting round about Easter when I am still vacuuming up pine needles! But I know that an artificial tree would never be tolerated at Willow House, the boys (and that includes Stuart) would be up in arms over that and as they always decorate the trees I can't really complain.

And then there is the size issue, small,

which illicits shouts of "Scrooge, call that a Christmas tree a Hobbit wouldn't call that a Christmas tree, in fact Action Man wouldn't call that a Christmas tree".

Medium,

"Can't we have a bigger one?"

Large,

"We'll have to cut 3' off the bottom and 2' off the top so we can get it in the house."

I mean does it really matter how big the tree is as long as you have one? Apparently yes it does and in a couple of weeks when we go to buy the trees I will have to use all my powers of persuation to prevent the purchase of a tree that was really intended for Trafalgar Square!

Next comes the question of how many trees? Surely one will do? Of course not we need one for the living room, one for the dining room and one for the hall. Well that settles the small, medium and large debate, one of each please. Although I have to be very and I mean very careful when it comes to the small tree. Too small and we have to have more than one small tree in the room. One year we ended up with 5 trees! Now that's what I call excessive but at least it wasn't expensive we were given the 3 small trees, thank goodness.

Then how long does the tree stay up? At last a tradition that no one within the family argues with, the full 12 days of Christmas.

So what do you do? I would love to hear about your Christmas tree traditions.

Now back to teapots, lovely collections are now being shown over at Lisa's and Alison's, anybody else playing?