O Christmas tree, how desperately
Do I suddenly wish it was January.
O Christmas tree, how readily
Would I stuff you in the green bin, seriously.

The author’s Christmas tree adorned with gifts and baubles. (Just watch out for the latter – they fall like rocks.)Credit:

There you go, Mariah Carey. Let’s see you take those lyrics and turn them into a new yuletide money-spinner. I, meanwhile, will go back to sulking about the hideous, deteriorating, obnoxious colossus that’s taken up squatter’s rights in my living room, where it will spend the next three weeks being feted by misty-eyed visitors who’ll waltz in, take a noisy snootful of pine tree, and exclaim joyfully that the whole place smells like Christmas.

To which I say the following.

First, Christmas does not smell like anything because Christmas does not have a smell. Second, even if it did, in my house the scent is inevitably accompanied by subtle undertones of eau de profane language from the resident control freak (that would be me) charged with hydrating the base and chasing pine needles out of floorboards.

Third, this notion that the more the tree decays, the better it smells, is a falsehood cooked up by the ghosts of Christmas marketing doo-wop........

© The Sydney Morning Herald