Just a little festive tale, hopefully to amuse you all… every year, my kids always express a nostalgic longing for a “real” Christmas tree. And every year, being not only the skinflintiest of skinflints, but also someone who doesn’t like to feel responsible for encouraging the aimless slaughter of innocent trees, I say, of course we can have one, provided it doesn’t cost more than about £10 less than any “real” tree actually available in our neighbourhood…
I went to pick up Dear Son no.3 from his university city on Tuesday. I needed some lightbulbs and one or two other small things, and by this point in the festive season I’m always very short of time, so I decided to leave half an hour early & pop into a well-known Scandinavian emporium en route, rather than make a separate trip down to our nearest city, which would have taken over an hour.
For the last few years, they’ve done an offer of “buy a tree for £25, receive a £20 voucher” to spend in the New Year. Which makes the tree very reasonable; basically £5, provided you can get back there in January/February & spend the voucher on things you actually need. And indeed I will be going back there, and there are things – like lightbulbs – which they do very well, and it does no harm to have a few extra in stock. But being so close to Christmas, I assumed they would have sold out of their very-reasonable trees long ago.
But whilst I was hurtling round the store, a voice announced over the tannoy that the offer had become rather better, as they’d been left with a fair number of trees & it was getting rather late to sell them. The trees were now just £5, but buyers would still get the £20 voucher. Which means, in effect, that they were (potentially) paying us £15 to take them away!
That, of course, was easily inside the arbitrary limit that I’d set. So a beautiful little Nordmann fir came home with me (little because our living room is little; they had bigger ones but I don’t have a bigger room!) and has been decorated with 1001 precious little memories, and is gracing a corner of our lives for the next 12 days.
We do have a very nice “fake” tree, from the same source, also bought for much less than the original price. But it will still be in the loft to be used next year, if I can’t track down a tree for free (or very little) that isn’t otherwise going to be used. But I doubt that I will ever again effectively be paid to take one away…
Wishing you all a merry, lighthearted & peaceful Christmas – or Yule, or Hanukkah, or Midwinter festival.
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