Christmas in Worthing: Lessons in how not to decorate your tree!

Families in festive attire or matching Christmas pyjamas hang dainty ornaments from a perfectly lit tree while drinking hot cocoa and reminiscing about Christmases past.

Maybe it’s just us, but that’s not normally how the process of festively adorning our home goes...

First, you’ve got to get the decorations out of the loft, and that’s a mission in itself, particularly when you have somebody as weak-armed as me trying to ‘receive’ the items from an impatient husband above, who clearly takes inspiration from the airdropping of supplies from a plane.

Then, once you’ve lugged it all downstairs, something is always missing or broken. This year, it was a string of outside lights – which we realised after we’d put them up and tried to turn them on. Apparently we don’t do basic things like checking them before we start going up the ladder and hanging them up...

The inside lights work this year – yay – but is it even possible for them not to get in a big tangle? Or is it just one of life’s inevitabilities that you will spend half an hour chasing your tail as you attempt to get them straight, before winding them around the tree, realising you’ve been too enthusiastic at the top and the bottom is unlit, and having to start again?!

Ornaments next. I love this bit, as I remember all the places they were bought over the years. The only stumbling block is when the kids want to ‘help’ and the majority of them end up in a massive clump on the lower branches.

Not wanting to dismiss their excellent decorating skills, you have to spend an agonising few hours resisting the urge to rearrange until after they’ve gone to bed.

And then, caught on the back foot the next morning when questioned about their best work having been redone, you find yourself inventing reasons such as ‘Santa sent his fairies to help you get some of them a bit higher up’. Not sure Santa’s fairies are a thing but I panicked.

And I know I wrote about it last year, but we’re now firmly in Elf on the Shelf season. Noddy, our house elf, has made a reluctant return and the nightly alarms to remind me to stage him have already become an annoyance.

Just 17 nights to go...!