I always feel sad about 'the tree'. We are beguiled every year into buying the 'real thing' by the smell, the rustling crispness of the branches, the enthusiasm of boy person. The plastic version just wouldn't quite have the same effect. We like the wrestling with the thing, being spiked, and then sweeping up drifts of needles everyday.
I don't know as a P.Mat if we should be buying a vrai or not...apparently Paris scoops up its 24,000, or something, trees and makes lovely mulch for the green spaces, sounds pretty good...
Our 2010 tree is now in small firelighting pieces, and the needles are in newspaper parcels for the same reason. Perhaps I should enlarge on this next year and make it a ceremony of P.Matism, including a purge of all festive flab food, gorge ourselves on cabbage soup, ryvita etc, could catch on....
