By the time you read this, we’ll be taking down the Christmas decorations. I don’t like to let them go. I love the mischief of the days and nights over Christmastide. They sit outside ordinary time, disappearing and extending of their own accord. I enjoy the historical ambiguity over when Twelfth Night falls: the 5th, or this night? I don’t want to be pressed by traditions or superstitions, making up my own ways to say goodbye to the festive period – yet still, I’m wary of them.
We used to cut our tree from the estate we lived on, but in recent years we’ve chosen one from Willis Farm, high on the downs, where they’re grown sustainably, with wildlife in mind. Ours is a colourful tree. Each bauble has meaning and I’m sorry to see them go. Some are from childhood; a treasured wooden goose, and a beaver nestled in a walnut shell, came from a Christmas shop in Banff, Alberta, bought on a day off from ranching in 1989.
A decorative beaver nestled in a walnut shell. Photograph: Nicola Chester
There are silver acorns and golden apples, and an inordinate number of birds and animals – a sleeping fawn, a bejewelled owl, a badger in a dressing gown smoking a pipe. There are clay ornaments made years ago by our children, in the school up the lane where I made this year’s wreath. Place, memory, irreverence, reverence, the outside in, all celebrated.
I’ll disentangle the now-brittle golden-green mistletoe from the ceiling light. I’ll freeze the berries and, come spring, press them into the leaf scars on apple boughs, and hope for growth. I’ll take the crunchy remains of our wind-tossed wreath and redistribute them about the garden.
Holly, ivy and hawthorn berries have many uses. Photograph: Nicola Chester
This year we’ve made new places for old things. The swag of tinsel that looped down the banister of our 1950s cottage for two decades now makes a grotto of our bungalow kitchen arch, prinked with sprays of now-curled fir, holly, ivy and hawthorn berries. I’ll dismantle it, extricate more sprigs from the felted mouse choir that makes a stage of our mantelpiece, and send all the greenery up the chimney of the lit fire, before dashing outside to watch the sparks rise into the night. Gold stars against the silver. Eventually, the cut-up tree will follow.
Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount