I’ve had a weird thought about baubles after talking to my husband just now, two days before Christmas, and while looking lovingly at the tree in the corner. The discussion we had was about what his ideal Christmas tree would look like.

This is our tree – stylish or what?

I was shocked and stunned to hear him reply that in an ideal world (i.e. one where I didn’t just take over and decorate the tree myself every year) he’d have a tree with single colour baubles on it. He wouldn’t have any variation in colour. He wouldn’t even have two colours. He’d just have a single colour scheme. He even said the phrase ‘twelve silver baubles’. I’m sure he’d place the baubles neatly equidistant part. He might even use this website as a guidance.

So I asked him: don’t you feel any emotional connection with the family baubles and a need to see them every year on the tree? He replied that no, the tree was to him, merely a decoration. A decoration? A decoration!?

My husband’s idea of Christmas heaven

He said that he’d also go for an artificial tree over the real tree were it up to him.

We couldn’t be more different in our Christmas tree styles. I like a real tree (I love the smell). I like a mix of baubles. I like them to look what I see as stylish but I like the juxtaposition of old and new, funny and serious, trashy and classy. I like to look at them and remember Christmasses past. I like the memories each of them holds for me. We have baubles from Habitat, pre-children (classy) and ones from B&Q post-children (trashy). We have home-made ones, also post-children. We have borrowed ones, pre-children. We have old ones, very pre-children.

Our Christmas tree is decorated with many baubles from our family history.

Disco ball from c.2001 next to salt dough decoration from 2011 (the year we made these for the teachers)

The baubles are a mix of all sorts of things.

Last year’s  new decoration – a pudding

We have a Collins family tradition and that is to add a new decoration every year.

This year’s new addition

So today I find out, after 14 years of marriage, that my husband and I have irreconcilable differences on Christmas style.

Oh dear. He added though he doesn’t mind that he doesn’t get to choose the Christmas tree (which he’d get from B&Q) or the baubles (all silver). Would I feel the same way if it were the other way around? I doubt it.

Now that is what I call a tree to beat all trees