Prelit Christmas Tree

I know Christmas is coming when I start wondering where I left the ladders. I use them to get up to the attic. That's where all the Christmas decorations are. However, Christmas really begins when I set down in the kitchen with a cup of steaming coffee and hit the switch on my prelit Christmas tree.

Yes, it's the prelit Christmas tree that does it for me. We go back a long way, that Xmas tree and I. Some people feel sentimental writing Christmas cards, others when they bite into their first slice of Xmas cake. I may have a more prosaic start to Christmas, but the moment I light that tree still sends a shiver of pleasure down my spine.

Fibre Optic Christmas Tree

Yes, a fibre optic lamp is about as kitsch as you can get. At least I thought so until I unwittingly met my fantasy Christmas decoration in a department store last year - a fibre optic Christmas Tree.

I missed the 70s. At least I missed them in any meaningful way. I had just got of diapers by the end of the decade, with a little help from others, and I've stayed away from them ever since. However, my parent's house didn't make the transition into the next decade, nor the decade that followed, by casting off its old clothes and donning the new. Orange rugs, lava lamps and bean bag chairs all made it into the 80s and formed much of the landscape of my teenage years. However, the pride of place went to a fibre optic lamp. Half spaceship, half alien grassy moll, it was rarely turned on after it zapped my mother once while she was doing the vacuuming.

Well, now it's back with vengeance in the form of a Christmas tree. My dreams, once again, have come true.