A Christmas Theme

I appear to have developed an addiction to glossy magazines. I have read 3 of them in the past 4 weeks and this definitely cannot be normal.

I must confess that I am using the term “read” in the loosest possible sense of the word. What I really mean is that I have looked at the lovely photographs and baulked at the amount of cash that people spend on items to shove in their house at Christmas to make everything feel more festive.

Christmas at the Jodhpurs household consists of a 7 foot fake tree in the lounge and some strings displaying Britney (not her real name)’s Christmas cards.

The Chinese-manufactured 7 foot tree is something of an antique. I purchased it from Argoose 14 years ago; it cost £19.99 and came with a free set of lights.

The lights gave up the ghost many years ago. In fact I seem to recall getting them out one Christmas and despite them working perfectly on the floor, after I had flung them onto the tree from a great distance they refused to work at all. So I merrily cut them up with a pair of scissors, put them in the wheelie bin and nipped to Woolworths to buy a replacement set. Incredibly, the Woolworths set still work but the tree is so enormous that we have another set from Sainsbury’s that are intermingled with them.

Incidentally, I cannot believe that I have just dedicated an entire paragraph to the history of my Christmas tree lights.

Anyway, at this time of year all these fat and glossy magazines are packed to bursting with inspirational Christmas ideas. And from what I understand there are basically 3 different Christmas themes:

Traditional, Contemporary and Scandinavian.

Well how exciting. I didn’t know that we were expected to adopt a theme for Christmas.

I flicked through the lovely photographs again, imagining that my house resembled the ones in the photo shoots and tried to ignore Britney’s pens and toys that were scattered all over the floor in the real world.

Firstly, our house cannot do Contemporary. It’s an old building and it needs to be filled with walking sticks, coats with zips that do not work, wellies and paintings of pheasants. Pictures of VW Beetles and distressed signs informing all and sundry that the household would rather be at the beach, just would not work.

My friend, The TK Maxx Ambassador, has a Contemporary home and I love it. It’s a new build, full of bleached driftwood, inspirational signs, pink fluffy things and pretty lights. It looks beautiful because it is a new house. If you transported her amazing home interior into my house, it would look as though Britney had decorated it with a tenner to spend at Poundland; and a catapult.

A Traditional theme has to be more appropriate for my house. Upon referring back to the glossy magazine that had become my Christmas bible, I discovered that I would need to have a roaring open fire to achieve this look and every surface must be covered with holly and ivy. I tried the greenery thing a few years ago and it frazzled to a crisp on the beams in my lounge within a day. That’s one of the problems with log burners the size of Bristol and the fact that heat rises.

I was also a bit concerned that I might have to kit out the Jodhpurs family in matching jumpers and stand around a piano singing Christmas carols. This is a bit of an issue as none of us can actually play the piano. Standing around Britney’s Karaoke machine singing along to a Little Mix backing track can’t have the same Christmas feeling surely?

So it seems that the only theme available to me is the Scandinavian one. I have to confess that this was my favourite theme all along and I even took the liberty of going and getting my credit card before I starting reading about how to turn my house into a typical festive Scandinavian house.

There is nothing quite like the thrill of buying nice new things and I was ready, plastic card in hand to ensure my house resembled a Swedish Ski Chalet by Christmas Eve.

According to the glossy magazine, if you are adventurous enough to seriously alter your home interior to take on the theme, you need lots of wood.

Luckily when the man converted our house from an ancient, derelict mill there was obviously a very good deal on wood. The deal must have been very, very good, because the entire 1^st floor of my house is tongue and groove wood panelling. This resembles a Swedish sauna as opposed to a Swedish home but nevertheless, it was a very good start.

You also need a log burner to fully embrace the Scandinavian theme. At this point I placed my credit card on the coffee table because I have one of those as well. Unfortunately Dick Van Dyke (The Chimney Sweep) isn’t coming to sweep the chimney until Thursday and consequently the log burner is belching toxic smoke into the lounge whenever I open the door to throw another log in.

I suppose at least I know that I am not in a sauna because I am choking instead of sweating.

Apparently you also need faux fur throws to truly accept the Scandinavian theme. Reading this made me put my credit card back in my wallet because I’ve already got 2 faux fur throws on each sofa.

A Scandinavian Christmas theme also consists of red and white decorations. I do not need any more red and white Christmas tree decorations either; for we live in fear of the tree collapsing under the weight of red and white decorations.

Orange and clove aromas are very Scandinavian. But there’s no point in me ordering any fragrance that can replicate that because I bought a shoot load of Spiced Apple fragrance oil from The Body Shop years ago and I sprinkle it on top of my hot log burner whenever it has smoked us out.

Pine cones feature very heavily in a Scandinavian Christmas. So it’s lucky that Britney and I go and collect them from the wood nearby. Unfortunately, instead of using them to make Christmas tree decorations or table centres, we dry them out and then chuck them by the bucket load into the log burner when it needs lit.

So it would seem that I have created a Scandinavian Christmas without buying a thing.

I am delighted and am playing some ABBA tunes to celebrate. Pint of Aquavit, anyone?