Christmas trees for book characters

 

Christmas is nearly upon us and I am horribly disorganised - still driving around frantically picking up last minute presents and food and drink items. While I have been doing this, I have been pondering the back stories of some of my book characters. I am sure I am not the only author who does this. What, I ask myself, are they doing when they are not appearing in my book? My over active brain has sometimes concocted entire lives for my characters - lives which have never appeared in print nor ever will do. 

Anyway, just this morning I was thinking about Angus out of my latest book Jump Cut, and how he would celebrate Christmas. Clearly he would spend the day with his father, the peppery old Mr. Fraser, and I am fairly convinced that the pair of them would have a long running fiction that Mr. Fraser was going to cook the Christmas dinner. In the event, he would always forget things, start on it too late or generally mess it up, so Angus would end up cooking and then the pair of them would pretend it was all Mr. Fraser's work. They would also go to church, not because either of them is particularly religious, but because the late Mrs. Fraser always went at Christmas, so now Mr. Fraser goes in honour of her, and makes Angus go along too. Angus would have a Christmas tree too, and it would either be an outdoor one which he decorates with lights every year, or a real one which he drags in at the very last minute, having been occupied with other things; sometimes it would get decorated and occasionally it wouldn't. 

This led me to consider what the other characters in the book would have in the way of Christmas trees. (Have you nothing better to do, I hear you cry.) Well, here's what I came up with. 

Max would definitely have a huge, beautiful, "perfect" Christmas tree, probably a sparkling white artificial one, completely regular and decorated in a strict palette of colours and shapes. No tatty inherited baubles, purple tinsel or mismatched colours for him. 

Mary Arden would have an equally large tree, but probably a real one. It would be a Norway Spruce because she likes something traditional, but this would also mean a lot of needle drop. Mary wouldn't care two hoots about that, because it would be somebody else's problem. She'd probably also be incredibly fussy about how it was decorated (again, by someone else), and as soon as it was finished she'd lose interest. 

Lillian Velderkaust (the 1930s film director) would have something chic but not particularly Christmassy. I'm not sure whether arty Art Deco Christmas trees were ever a thing, but that's what she'd have. I imagine it as being something like the one in the pic (left) - colourful and minimalistic. I mean, she has other things to worry about; she can't be doing with sweeping up pine needles. 

Hugh Mason would definitely have something ultra traditional, so it would be a real tree - perhaps a Douglas fir, though my daughter suggested a Fraser fir with real candles on it: "a proper fire hazard", she said. That sounds about right. 

Richard Foster would have something low maintenance and modern for his city apartment - maybe one of those sets of pre-lit decorative cones with LED lights. 

And Mrs Harris? I think she'd have a mini tree in her housekeeper's quarters at Garthside. On Christmas Eve she'd eye it with disfavour, while allowing herself a single festive gin. You can't get drunk if you're always on call, after all...