It’s only mid-December, and already Christmas has made me cry. The ‘tree’ I bought a few years ago is charming—plain wood and Scandinavian-style. In my head, I imagined it hung with a few beautiful, simple paper decorations. Perhaps folded origami cranes in different colours. Elegant, I thought.

My daughters, Kitty, 6, and Elsa, 9, begged for tinsel. For baubles. And so, because Christmas is about kids, I acquiesced. Once the tree was decorated a few days ago, Elsa declared for perhaps the eighth time in half an hour: ‘I HATE our tree. It’s so ugly. Can’t we go to Kmart and buy a green one in a box like everyone else in my class?’