AS a child, I used to nag my parents to get our Christmas tree early, but they steadfastly refused to buy one until the very last minute.

I’d see trees going up in windows all around the village and looked on with envious frustration. Some people even had those trendy new artificial silver ones, whose shimmer and sparkle were mesmerising to those of us eagerly awaiting December 25, which always approached at the pace of a sloth on a slow day.

Finally, around December 23, when I was about fit to burst, Dad would go to buy a real tree and out would come all our decorations that had seen many, many years of use.

Back then, the round baubles were nearly all made of wafer-thin glass, so we’d usually lose one or two mid-decorating.

We also had more ornate metal baubles which varied in shape from the conventional, like yellow bells and red Santas, to the more bizarre, like pink bunches of grapes (why?), green minarets, and those with the front scooped out to reveal the shiny innards (well that’s what they looked like to me).

The good, bushy tinsel would have pride of place, front and centre, while its sad, threadbare relatives, now barely more than straggly string, would be relegated to a lowly position round the back (We all know the unwritten rule of Christmas is still ‘Thou Shalt Not Dispose of Old and Tatty Decorations but Keep Them Forever Even if They Will Never Again See the Light of Day’).

Our plastic Christmas fairy, in a faded net tutu, would go on top last of all. She wasn’t the smartest or prettiest fairy, but we never thought to get rid of her until one Christmas, when we were all grown up, we came home to find she had been replaced with a rather fancy star.

The mood of 1970s glam rock was reflected in the baubles and tinsel, a glittery assortment of styles and colours which now would be considered the polar opposite of taste and sophistication.

But we loved it all, and were prepared to suffer the pain of a thousand Norway Spruce needles in our fingers to make sure we covered the tree in just about every decoration we owned. There was no such thing as too much tinsel back then.

Today’s children, with their poncy soft-needled, non-dropping, fire-retardant Nordman Firs will never understand the kind of dogged determination needed to decorate a Norway Spruce.

In his column from December 18, 1976, Dad explains that the Norway Spruce was by far the most popular real tree of the day, and the reason he and mum were so reluctant to put one up early was its propensity for shedding.

We did keep it up, as tradition dictated, until the Epiphany on January 6, though, which was when we regretted our decorating zeal, as removing them was like rolling your arms along a hedgehog over and over again.

Then Dad would carry this bone-dry fire hazard outside, followed by a thick trail of browning needles.

Many people think Queen Victoria’s husband Albert brought the Christmas tree custom over from Germany.

But according to Her Majesty the Queen’s own website, royal.uk (possibly the finest web address on the planet), it was Queen Charlotte, consort of George III, who first introduced a Christmas tree into the royal household in the late 1700s.

But the popularity of Victoria and Albert was the reason it became a national institution.

The association of royalty with Christmas trees still persists, and every year, the Queen gives trees to Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s Cathedral in London, as well as to St Giles’ Cathedral and Canongate Kirk in Edinburgh. She also donates trees to schools near the Sandringham estate where the Royal family spend Christmas.

As we decorated our tree this year (a Nordman Fir put up nice and early!), it was with more than a little sadness that for the first time, Dad wouldn’t be here to share the festivities with us. But we have enjoyed many lovely Christmases with him, and were very lucky that last year, we had a wonderful family celebration with no idea it would be his last.

So I want to pass on my good wishes and thoughts for the season to all of you who are missing loved ones at this special time, and ask you to spare a thought too for those who are spending Christmas with no-one at all.