"Deck the halls with boughs of holly ... fal la la la la, la la la la ... "

We joined the "Bah, Humbug!" brigade years ago.

We used to receive about 300 cards each year and then hung them on strings all round the room. As the price of cards and postage kept going up we decided not to send cards (except to people abroad or we rarely see) and asked everyone not to send to us but to donate the money to a local charity instead. We, now, give £200 to a charity each Christmas.

When I was working we used to cut the top 15ft off one of our conifers each year and drag that into work. Our reception area was 17ft high so it fitted beautifully in there. We made a support for the tree by buiding a large cube (4ft square) of crossed wooden struts that supported the tree and it had a large bucket in the bottom that we topped up with water every day.

It took a lot of lights and decorations to make it look fantastic but it drew a lot of people that came each year to look at it. It took us a while to work out how to get the fairy on the top of the tree and to get all the lights and decorations on the upper part. Then a bright spark had an idea . We took the bucket of water away and then laid the tree on its side - not completely flat as the framework held it at an angle. Fairy fixed to top and two separate strings of lights put on the upper area and connected by extension leads to the power. Checked that they worked and put the tree upright. The rest was done from a step ladder.

Guess what? Our insurance company had no Christmas spirit. They charged us an extra £50 if we wanted to leave the lights on when we weren't there! We wanted them left on as the tree was in the window area of the shop. Changed insurance companies the next year

 

My post has gone from a normal 1200pm delivery to a 1615pm delivery with a magazine that normally arrives on a Saturday being 5 working days late and arriving today.........it must be Christmas!!