This weekend was the weekend when we traditionally used to put the tree up at home.

My youngest brother had the audacity to be born 11 days before Christmas and therefore at a time when everyone else was bouncing about Christmas, telling me how they’d put the tree up, been to see Father Christmas and had their houses, homes and hearts ready for Christmas… our house looked like the Kranks, with no cards, no tinsel and no tree.

That was my Mum’s rule. She made it, and she enforced it with a will of iron. Because his birthday came in December, Christmas could only start after we had celebrated his special day. I can understand it, in one way, but in another way I think there were better ways to do it. I might, myself, have been inclined to make the Christmas celebrations my own, with an insistence on always having the right to put the star at the top of the tree, or to be the first and the last decoration hanger, or having my own advent calendar while other siblings shared. Whatever, to those of us with May birthdays which never got in the way of anything, the need to wait until a well-long chunk through Advent even to talk Christmas, December birthdays seemed the pits.

But when the tree did go up, what a delight that was!

We had what, looking back, must have been the spindliest, steel wired branches and green tinsel wound around tree possible. One could lift it with one hand, it was that lightweight. It slid together in a trunk no thicker than most plumbing pipes, and stood in a tripod stand held firm by keys which, I swear, escaped to the depths of the decoration box and out into the wider attic every year for an adventure.

I was born in 1968, and the collosal trees of my childhood memories spanned the early 70s to early/mid 80s, by which time we’d gone posh and got a real artificial tree (think plastic fir twigs that fitted snuggly onto prongs sticking out of the main branches… snugly, I say, until they didn’t and one by one slid slowly off and dropped, just as real trees do, to the floor. Occasionally, one decided impromptu not to fit and would ‘ping’ maliciously off the spur and fly across the room, never to be found again) and had started to replace decorations that, now, would be vintage but then were tired, exhausted, and worn.

We had flock santas which, over the years, shed their skins to appear less the benevolent chappies of dreams and more the newly created monsters of Frankenstein’s visions. Pipecleaner creatures with silver bells, chenille pipecleaners so soft and thick it was irresistible to run them along the bottom lip and feel the smoothness against the chin. They look, now, so much like Jack from the Nightmare Before Christmas that they may indeed have been his inspiration. There were plastic bells, gaudy and silent, with red velvet ribbon that frayed as it swayed. And the baubles. The baubles.

When I was very young, a lot of the baubles dated from Mum’s tree as a youngster. Very possibly they were silvered glass, beautiful mid-century german-made baubles that caught the light and would delight most Christmas afficionados now. Sadly, delicate and glass do not go well with four rambunctious and eager children. I don’t think any remain.

We were trusted more, but with even less reason, to handle the silken baubles. These polystyrene balls were wrapped in silk threads in the shades of the seventies: fuschia pink, an orange so bright the satsumas would blush to see it, green that trod the finest of lines between spring and neon. I remember purple, red, blue. The silken thread wrapped round the body a thousand, thousand times to make a smooth, elegant bauble crying out to be stroked. And then it would catch on a nail, on a branch end, on a zip, or by the end on a breath of wind passing by and create a labyrinthine-worthy ball of tangled, tattered, intoxicatingly Gordian knotwork. Once loose, it was lost. The baubles battled on for years, losing a few more of their battalions each time. By the mid-eighties, Mum surrendered and we got the latest plastic, shatterproof round baubles in red, gold and green.

The tree was never complete without the handmade offerings brought home from school. I’m sure there was a pipecleaner angel somewhere: certainly there were folded stars, knitted angels and choirboys (once I learned to knit) and a small, battered Father Christmas made from a matchbox with zigzag legs and a cotton wool beard made at a time when cotton wool was real cotton, and not artificial. He’s still in the decoration box, and came out this weekend for my Dad’s first tree without Mum. They lost or left the trees of the 70s and 80s behind a while ago: pre-lit trees became the thing, saving both patience and time when it came to unravelling the fairy lights. I haven’t seen his tree yet. I suspect it will be rather more minimalist than ever, with decorations there solely to please the great-grandchildren.

And my first tree post-Mum? Well, I still have the decorations we bought together as we toured garden centres with the little babies and I’ll put them on with a smile, but my Mum’s heart and memory to me lies in a small, old, battered pink net fairy, no more than four inches tall, with pipecleaner legs and a beehive hairdo, who sits just below the star at the top of my tree. Way back as a child, my reward for waiting until now to start Christmas was to put the last decoration in place; this battered survivor shone like gold then, and her presence was the signal that Christmas really had arrived. I liberated her from Mum and Dad a couple of years ago, and when I put her up there on my own in some sort of private ceremony, I’m not ashamed to say I cried. Mum: blonde, small, desperately clinging on, and telling me to be patient. She’s there with me, and always will be.

How to Hygge the British Way is my gift to the world. I don’t get paid for writing it, I’m not in it for the kudos, financial rewards, to become an influencer, work with brands or otherwise make any money from the blog. That’s why there are no ads, and any products I mention and recommend have either been gifted to me or bought by me with my everyday wages or donations from supporters. Every book I review has been bought and read by me, unless stated otherwise.

I do get a couple of pennies each time someone buys from the Amazon links on my page, as an Amazon Affiliate, but otherwise if you’d like to support me, I like to give something back in return. That’s why I write books. It always feels good if you get a book back in return for some money. You can find a full list of my books at my Author’s Page on Amazon, but especially recommended for this time of year are:

Cosy Happy Hygge: Setting up a rhythm to life and rituals to enjoy it to make for a more balanced life that handles waves and storms better. Lent is a season of rituals and resets. The book has small and easy ways to make your life flow with grace and happiness, which lead to more hygge.

Happier: Probably my most personal book, it’s the story of how I used hygge and the little things in life to help boost my happiness. I still go back and reread to remind myself what I need to do to be a happy human. And it’s always the little things.

IMy Christmas books are always available: Have Yourself a Happy Hygge Christmas is a good place to start, on how to make the season cosier, happier. 

Celebrating a Contagious Christmas was written during covid year, but has useful advice on celebrating when times are hard anyway and Enjoying a Self-Care Christmas is a short e-book on keeping Christmas simpler, easier and better for you, your waistline and your budget. It even includes 25+ suggestions for self-care activities over Christmas, as simple as sipping tea, keeping a list journal or lighting a candle. Bigger is not always better for Christmas.

I’m currently working on two book projects: I have a hankering to rewrite 50 Ways to Hygge the British Way, so it’s not available at the moment, but even dearer to my heart and my next stated aim is to finish and publish my next book, Simple Plus Cosy = Hygge. It will be about homemaking and how the home we create shapes the hygge we have. Hopefully it will be finished by the end of summer 2025.

If you’d like to support me, but don’t want to buy a book, I have a Paypal.Me account as Hygge Jem. Every little helps, so even a few pence goes towards the books, goods and courses I use and recommend on the site. I’m grateful for every little bit that brings me closer to my dream of full-time writing, and I know I couldn’t still be writing if it weren’t for the support of many readers and friends out there. Thank you all for every little bit of support, emotional, physical and financial, you give me.

If you’ve enjoyed this article, don’t forget to share it or save it so others can enjoy reading, thinking about and living hygge as well.

The photo between post and promotions is the completed picture from a Sip and Paint session I attended a couple of weeks ago. I love these sessions: you go with a blank canvas and usually end up with something that, left to your own devices, you might never have figured out how to do. This painting used only five colours and it was how we combined and blended them that made the difference. I’m a very unconfident painter, so this is paradise to me. Call it Fox and Snow, or perhaps The Fox of Delights in honour of one of my favourite Christmas TV programmes.