It wasn’t until a few years ago when a neighbour’s daughter watched me bring a giant conifer into the living room that it dawned on me what a strange tradition it is. “There’s a tree next to your couch,” said the little girl. Her family is Jewish and this was her first time decorating a Christmas tree. In recent years, I’ve suggested alternatives to my family –– amaryllis in clay pots, a plug-in olive tree, or how about some twinkly branches? –– all met with varying levels of conniption. The year I doused a three-foot Balsam Fir in lights will forever be the year Mama Stole Christmas. I get it. Had my Mum proposed juniper berry branches in slender glass vases as an alternative to the plump, jolly green confection I was used to, I would have probably lobbed a mince pie at the wall. Christmas overwhelms me. It overwhelms most of us. The lights, the music, the excess. The cloudburst of needles. The heightened expectations. It is a lot. Bringing a ten-foot tree into a skinny Victorian and stationing it next to your couch for a month, is a lot. But we do it because we know that our children love the tradition. And because we loved it when we were young. And because, despite the bickering and breaking of baubles and untangling of wires and NEEDLES EVERYWHERE –– not to mention the sheer bizarreness of it all –– a tree covered in lights and sparkle really is a sight to behold.