I am 68 and I have put up fifty Christmas trees. This is the first time I have written a letter about what goes under one.
I am 68 and I have put up fifty Christmas trees. This is the first time I have written a letter about what goes under one.
Six things these two Christmas tree skirts get right that fifty years of old sheets and tangled wires never did, from a woman who spotted the first one in a church full of Christmas trees.
Pat Holloway · Customer · Leeds · 5 min read
I had better say who is talking first. I am Pat, I am 68, and I live in Leeds with my husband Brian and his spaniel Wilf. I have put up a Christmas tree every December for fifty years, I have opinions about tinsel that I keep to myself, and I have never once thought anything to do with a tree was worth writing to anybody about. Well. I have changed my mind, and it took a church full of Christmas trees to change it.
The tree skirts I am writing about are from the Christmas tree skirt collection at Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been quietly finding women like me the things we did not know we were allowed to have for a few years now. They are round, they go on the floor under the tree, and there are twenty designs. When the boutique asked if they could put my letter up for other women to read, I said yes, on the condition I could be completely honest in it.
I first saw one last December. My sister June and I went on the coach to Derbyshire for the day, and the parish church at Ashbourne had its Christmas tree festival on. Every village group, school and Brownie pack dresses a tree, and they stand the length of the nave with their lights on. I assumed the best one would be the one with the most money spent on it. It was not. The tree everybody kept stopping at was the flower arrangers’ tree, and it was not the tree they were looking at. It was the ring round the bottom of it. A whole circle of nutcracker soldiers, a band of poinsettias, a deep red edge, and not a bucket or a plug in sight. The woman who had done it was on her knees straightening it. I said she must have made it herself. She laughed and said she could not sew a button on, and told me exactly where it was from. I ordered mine on my phone on the coach home. Read on.
Ours, last Christmas, in the front room. Brian says it is the first year the tree has looked finished at the bottom.
Here is what fifty Christmases taught me. The bottom of a tree comes in two kinds. There is the old white sheet, bunched round the stand, that looks like snow for about a day and like a sheet by Boxing Day. And there is nothing at all, the green plastic stand and the bucket and a tangle of fairy-light wire for everybody to see.
The top of our tree has had the same angel on it for forty years. The bottom has had an old sheet and a tangle of wires. I had stopped noticing, which is not the same as not minding.
These are the first that finish a tree properly. I have lived with one through a whole Christmas now, and with the second since it came this autumn, and it comes down to six things.
The morning it came, unfolded on the bed. I counted the soldiers before I had my coat off.
The nutcrackers make it look like a proper old-fashioned Christmas
The one from the church is called the Maud. It is cream, with a whole ring of toy nutcracker soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder round it, in red and royal blue and two different greens, tall black hats, white beards and big black moustaches, each with a little gold sword at his side. Outside them there is a narrow band of red poinsettias and holly between two gold lines, and then a wide deep red edge. It looks like the Christmases in the old storybooks. My grandson lay on his front and counted them on Christmas Eve and got a different number each time.
The bit I see from my chair. Red and blue and green soldiers, the poinsettias, the red edge.
My husband said the tree finally looked like the ones in the films we watched as children. The nutcrackers are lovely.
Barbara K., MatlockIt hides the stand and every trailing wire
This is the one I care about most, and the boutique says it plainly on every listing. It covers the stand and any trailing wires for a clean, finished look round the base. Our tree stands in a green plastic stand that has outlived two televisions, and the lights plug in behind it. For fifty years that corner of the front room has looked like the back of a stage. Now it looks like the front of one. Brian put the presents straight on top of it on Christmas Eve and nobody saw a wire all day.
No more looking at the bucket and the plug every time I sit down. The bottom of the tree looks done at last.
Margaret T., HathersageThe tartan one with the bears was Brian’s idea
We have a little tree in the back room as well, the one the grandchildren decorate. I showed Brian the collection on the tablet and he went straight past the flowers and the gnomes and put his finger on the Timberline. It is cream in the middle, with black bears walking between tall pine trees in black and brown, and a wide border of red, black and green tartan with a corded edge. It is the most Brian thing I have ever bought. It came this October and it has been sitting in the cupboard waiting for December like a child waiting for Christmas Eve.
The little tree in the back room, put up early for the photograph. Brian’s choice, and he was right.
Bought the tartan one for my son’s house. He rang to say it was the first Christmas present I had ever got him that he did not have to pretend about.
Joan F., YoulgreaveA patchwork look, without a winter at the sewing machine
My mother would have made something like this, and it would have taken her from the clocks going back until Christmas Eve. The boutique is honest that this is a patchwork-style design, the look of a handmade patchwork without any of the fuss, and that is exactly how it reads. From the doorway, from the settee, from anywhere a person actually stands, it looks like something somebody’s mother made. The two of them sit in different rooms and still look like they came from the same house.
Decorating day. Both of them out of the cupboard, waiting for the trees. Wilf has been told they are not dog beds.
Everybody who came round at Christmas asked who had made it. I let them think about it for a minute before I owned up.
Christine W., EyamThree sizes, so you buy the one that fits your tree
Every design comes in three sizes, measured across. The 91 cm is for a small or tabletop tree, the 122 cm suits most ordinary front-room trees, and the 183 cm is for a big tree in a big room. The boutique gives the centre opening too, 10 cm on the small and medium and 15 cm on the large. I measured across the bottom branches of our tree with Brian’s tape before I ordered, which I recommend, and the medium was right. The Timberline for the back room is the small.
Straightening the edge round the stand. Two minutes, and the stand is gone.
Measured across the bottom branches first and went for the middle size. It sits exactly to the tips of the bottom branches.
Patricia L., HartingtonTwenty designs, every one the same price
There are twenty designs in the collection, all at the same prices size for size. Nutcrackers and bears, a family of jolly gnomes in red and blue hats, a nativity under a gold star, a steam train running through snowy trees, little kittens on red, toadstools and mushrooms, old books with holly, and a few cactus ones I will leave to the more adventurous. The woman in Ashbourne has two. I have put the gnome one away for June, which means my Christmas shopping was started in October for the first time in my life.
Ordered the steam train one for my grandson’s tree and the nativity for my own. Both just as nice as the pictures.
Valerie M., BaslowThese tree skirts, against what has been under your tree
You can carry on with an old sheet or the bare stand, like I did for fifty years. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.
A bunched-up sheet or the bare stand
Wires and the bucket on show
Looks tired by Boxing Day
Guesswork on how much to cover
Nothing anybody stops to look at
Round, laid flat to the branch tips
Covers the stand and trailing wires
A patchwork look that finishes the tree
Three sizes, 91, 122 or 183 cm across
Twenty designs, same price
About the price
The 91 cm is £27.95, down from £56.00. The 122 cm is £32.95, down from £66.00, and the 183 cm is £55.95, down from £112.00. Every design in the collection is the same price, size for size.
I will pass on what the boutique told me, which is that these are in their sale while the Christmas stock lasts, and once a design sells through in a size, that one is gone until next year. Their words, not mine. What I can tell you from my side is that I have spent more than £56.00 on one Christmas in tinsel that went in the bin by Twelfth Night, so £32.95 for something I will get out every December for years made it an easy yes. Twice.
And I do not trust perfect scores, so I read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars, which sounded like real people rather than robots, so I read on. The same six things I have just walked you through come up in them, over and over, in other women’s words.
If the bottom of your tree has been an old sheet and a tangle of wires for as long as you can remember, this is where I would start, and I would start before the tree goes up rather than after. Have a look at the designs before somebody else takes your favourite, because the Christmas stock will not wait. And if you ever see a ring of nutcracker soldiers under a tree in a church in Derbyshire, you will know where I got the idea.
Pat
THE CHRISTMAS TREE SKIRT COLLECTION
- Twenty designs with a patchwork look
- Maud nutcrackers and Timberline bears and tartan
- Covers the stand and any trailing wires
- Round with a centre opening
- 91 cm £27.95 · 122 cm £32.95 · 183 cm £55.95
- Free UK delivery
Sale on now. The Christmas stock is already going.