(I’ve added an audio version of this week’s newsletter, following the suggestion from a reader who thought it might be nice to offer the option. I’m giving it a go!

The sound you hear at the end? My son starting his evening trumpet practice! 🎺 Oops!)

I can see dad, on his knees on the lounge carpet, carefully unfurling each branch of the tinsel tree. Sea green streams glinting, if a little more sparse every year.

But no less magical.

To change it would be to change Christmas.

Shoeboxes, smelling of old books and covered with festive wrap from years gone by, are ceremoniously brought down from the loft and opened to reveal delicate, handpainted baubles shining like jewels in fuchsia, emerald and gold.

To this day, I’m drawn to the ones that look just like them. And I know why.

How I wish I had just one or two of the originals, but they’ve been lost—along with the years, in my mother’s memory.

But I know that everything is tucked away, somewhere.

For safekeeping.

I can feel the softness of the little red stocking with the fur trim and green foil leaf detail I picked out one year with my mother in a department store Christmas hall (an annual tradition.)

I picture the delicate, white honeycomb tissue bells hanging from picture frames, ever more fragile each year.

In our hall, a small, silver tinsel tree stood on the leather-topped table, next to the Bakelite phone, decorated with coloured fairy lights and small, brightly coloured baubles. Above it, an ornate oval mirror and more lights.

The first Christmas I tree I bought for my own home was in my twenties, with Will, for our Covent Garden flat. A full size “lookalike”, we bought it from John Lewis on Oxford Street and struggled to carry it up the stone spiral staircase to our top floor apartment.

We picked out new baubles to hang along with the tiny Christmas stockings (knitted by Will’s grandmother) and white paper angels which once decked his childhood tree (always real. White lights.)

The cats loved to tease the low-hanging wooden fruit from its branches, chasing festive red apples across the old wooden floorboards.

Today, our collection of decorations includes those chosen or made by our children over the years, all haphazardly stored in an assortment of old Christmas gift bags (some still with the tags on). Each year, I say I’ll buy one of those storage trunks designed for the task, but then … maybe we’d miss those crumpled old bags?

Browsing the Christmas halls of a department store this week, I passed a mother and daughter shopping together. “But you don’t need any more decorations!” the daughter affectionately teased. “You can never have too many,” came the reply. We exchanged smiles.

An elderly lady steered her friend towards a display of old-fashioned looking glass baubles, painted with robins. “I prefer these more traditional ones,” she said.I stood mesmerised by a display of multi-coloured tinsel, shimmering in swathes (big and bushy—nothing like the ones I remember from my ’70s childhood.)

All of us, gathering up gleaming new treasures.

Holding those from the past close to our hearts.

I’m sharing this story as it ties in with the conversation I had with my guest for next week’s podcast, about how holiday decorations tell the stories of our lives and how, now more than ever, we’re looking to find those that remind us of bygone Christmases (fascinating).

Over on Instagram, I’ll post some pics I took of one store’s Christmas “decs” this year, as we Brits affectionately call them (my southern Californian friend tells me that one didn’t make it across the pond. 😂)

Do you have any that bring back special memories, or have you ever found yourself searching for ones which remind you of your childhood online?

I can’t wait for you to hear the episode! In the meantime, my homework for the weekend—set by our guest—is to watch It’s A Wonderful Life, which I’ve never seen.

Have you? Will I need very many tissues?

See you here next week!

Hopefully I’ll have pulled myself together by then. 🥺🎄

Love, Jen XX

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