What’s all the fuss about a Christmas tree?

Nothing divides the Christmas Grinch from the Christmas fan more than the subject of Christmas decorations.
Refusing to buy gifts for more than the best-loved few can be explained away on moral grounds or lack of money, but refusing to decorate a harmless tree is normally taken as a sign of genuine grinchness.
“I won’t do Christmas this year at all. It is just another big thing to have to worry about and I have had a very hectic year,” Jessica Allen, 33, said. “I got married this year, and so did my sister.”
“I haven’t decorated a tree for about a decade,” said 39-year-old Evanthia Vassiliou, “mainly because I was travelling a lot to other countries where I was studying. It’s not that I don’t like Christmas but I don’t see the point in all these preparations.”
Besides, she said, we have all lost the spiritual aspect and Christmas is just another excuse or opportunity to be with friends and family. Spending half your salary or more for just one day when it is possible to have Christmas without elaborate decorations is just plain crazy, she says.
There are practical considerations too, Vassiliou added only half-jokingly.
Last year her brother’s dog peed on the presents under her mother’s tree having decided it was time to mark new territory.
“It’s pointless, I can’t be bothered, “said Andria Christou, 24, sounding like a real Grinch. “It doesn’t add anything to our lives. You can still have Christmas without the damn tree.”
But she is not against Christmas per se and thus not a true Grinch either.
“I don’t feel we need decorations to create a Christmas spirit. I am going to feel it by human interaction, by doing something good, not by decorating.
“The decorations create joy? I think it’s fake and instead I place more value on the human element of things.”
Forty-year-old Giorgos Demetriou was dismissive of the whole idea. “Christmas is for kids,” he said, adding that he would only decorate his home as a kind of temporary social conformity if he did have children.
“When kids go to school they hear what other parents do, and you wouldn’t want your child to think my parents don’t to anything. But when they grow up I would gradually stop it because I don’t believe in Christmas,” he said.
“For a single person, it’s a waste of time. I’m going to be working every day except Christmas and New Year’s Day, and I don’t plan to host any parties, so what’s the point? Then again, I don’t like Christmas anyway!” said Emilios Anastasiou.
Anna Aristidou, though the mother of a grown up son, would tend to agree with the two single men as she has never been a big fan of decorating her home.
But, as she’s having guests for Christmas day, she has made a couple of concessions.
“I have bought a little wooden Christmas tree, which is on our living room table, and a Christmassy table cloth for the table where we will have lunch, just for the family,” she commented.
It seems that those who choose not to decorate would act differently if they thought it would make any positive difference to their life or the lives of others.