Sniffy Advent: Day, the twelfth

Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without decorating the house with bits of fake foliage and sparkly, glittery things.

I don't quite know the history and tradition around turning our homes into bizarre grottos, but I love it. Without having any exposure to these traditions, if somebody asked you to bring a tree into your house, to decorate with lights, tinsel, baubles and stick a fake fairy (or star) on top, you'd tell them to, with all due respect, fuck right off. If you were asked make garlands out of ivy and other winter greenery and drape these on your fireplace, or down your staircase, you'd think there'd been an escape from the local mental hospital and that you were conversing with escapee numero uno.

Utter insanity.

I guess it's all to do with Yuletide and shit like that, celebrating the midwinter and stuff. Fuck knows, it's just fun and there can't be much harm in that (unless you're a Labour local council and you have people who you wouldn't want to offend, but don't bother to ask them and just ban things to offend the majority and cause resentment all round).

Ahem!

So, today marked the start of the Sniffy preparations for bringing Narnia to our living room. A tree? In the living room?

A tree?

Living room?

Well, not a real tree, obviously. Ours is a fake one that has served us well for about seven years now. For eleven months of the year, the tree and the rest of the "winter festival" household adornments ("Christmas decs" to normal folk) live in the attic. Items designed to decorate and bring joy for a couple or three weeks are consigned to a part of the house that resembles a hostage cell. Because of the shape of the house, this cell is in a side attic that's accessed through a little door that's hidden behind a huge wardrobe in one of the bedrooms:

Skanky doorway to doom

So after the "Oh my God, the wardrobe's going to topple over!" trauma and the doorway to doom has been accessed, we're (I'm) met with this sight:

So, covered in dust, dirt and deadly spiders, you emerge with binbags of baubles and boxes of branches for the "assemble-it-yourself" tree. Some of the decorations are getting on for fifty years old, and they look it. I was tempted to go out and buy a whole load of new decs so as I wouldn't have to face the loft of doom. But there's something comforting in unwrapping the tissue-covered items each year and exclaiming to yourself "Oh yeah, I'd forgotten about that!" or, "I remember making this Miss Kershaw's class at primary school". Each item has its own particular place in the history of the Sniffy Christmasses past.

And once the tree is assembled and dressed with its assorted accoutrements. Once entering the living room makes you think that you're walking through an enchanted wardrobe into a land of perpetual winter, then you know that Christmas is well and truly on its way.