to tree or not to tree..

To tree or not to tree...

… that's the question.

If there's one thing that is one of my dearest child memories it is Christmas morning. The living room would be decorated with little golden angels, snow flakes sprayed on the window panes, and of course there were the tree and the grotto. My mum always took great pride in making both the tree and the grotto a memorable sight every year. The grotto was done using special grotto paper, and added were stones and pebbles gathered on walks in the alps, moss, twigs, leaves – making it all look very lifelike!

In there were very old statues of the holy family, shepherds, sheep and of course the oxen and the donkey. As a child I wasn't aware yet of the whole thing being basically a big fairytale, but hey, the atmosphere was great! The christmas tree usually barely fit into the room, had a nice spike or star on top and was loaded with ornaments, some newer ones, but many that had decorated the tree for generations. Those old decorations were handled with a lot of care. Doing up the tree was my mum's moment, so we left her to it and went to bed as she worked through the night, sipping a beer while carefully placing ornaments, tufts of angel hair and lametta. At christmas morning the couches were filled with presents for my brother and me as well as for lots of relatives and friends.

Around six in the morning when my dad had to get up for work, she'd be on a chair in the living room, sipping her beer and relishing the sheer beauty of her finished work of christmas art. Not that one particular day, though. Or should I rather say: night. We heard a big 'nooooooo!' – followed by some very uncharacteristic cursing. Apparently our cat Sjtruppi had decided to check on mum's work while she was going for another beer in the fridge and both cat and tree had sailed across the dining table, sending precious ornaments crashing and little raffia balls rolling in all directions. My mother was in tears, the cat was sitting in the mayhem she caused, looking rather surprised by the impact of her actions.

The tree was somewhat restored but the cat had her butt kicked out of the living room when my mother was doing the tree the following years.

Much later when I was living on my own, I put up my own christmas tree, using some of the same old ornaments that passed on to me after my mother passed away. At that time I didn't have a cat in the house, just dogs. Seeing a picture of a tree decorated with chocolate cookies I decided to go for a partly edible deco and put up about a dozen of merry looking sprinkled chocolate wreaths in my tree. The next morning I found only the strings they had been attached to, and a dog looking slightly discomforted, gazing at me, to the tree and back at me again. I looked at him and asked 'Midas, what happened to those cookies?'. He just looked at the tree again and then put up a guilty face. It was very clear were all the cookies had gone. A good thing he was a sturdy dog and he didn't get sick.

Years later I was living in Breda where we also had two cats. Again I ventured putting up a christmas tree, which went very well. Until the next morning when I stepped on a broken ornament, and noticed ornaments in various states of demolition spread across the living room. One of the cats sat on a table and casually tapped at a christmas ornament that was one of those special ones, that used to be my late grandmother's. I decided then and there that a christmas tree was neiter cat proof or dog proof, and I can only imagined what would happen if I were daft enough to put up a tree in this house. There are two fur-clad sherman tanks in this house, one blind shepherd, one galgo that loves to demarcate everything new in the house and one galgo that thinks she's a cat and would probably try to climb in it in search of something edible. And of course now we have four cats. Four. Of which our TT is definitely a one cat demolition squad on his own, so there will be some holiday wreaths at a safe height (like, suspende under the ceiling) and that will be it.

I will leave the rest of the deco for christmas to the dogs, no doubt they will have a very original lay-out in mind featuring the contents of a pillow, scraps of waste paper and various items from the kitchen counter. It will be a christmas deco like no other!