Confessions of a Christmas bauble hoarder

You can get a big plastic drum of silver Christmas baubles in Dunnes or Dealz for about €6, and, more and more, I find myself wanting one. There’s enough in there to decorate an entire tree; throw on 180 or so white lights and there you are: job done and now let’s just enjoy Christmas.

That’s one fantasy of mine. Another has me walking into a wood on a snowy Christmas Eve with a sharp axe and hauling back a fresh tree to a cabin with a wood-burning stove and the makings of some gin martinis. I’d decorate it with red ribbons and actual candles in little tin clip-on holders, then sit and admire it, wrapped up in a fur blanket while nibbling on an olive.

One day, a tree like that will be mine, but in the meantime it’s business as usual. Which means that shortly I’ll be yanking down the Stira and venturing into the attic, where Christmas is packed to the rafters. There’s a scary amount of baubles up there. It’s standing-room only between alleys of the stuff. Wicker baskets are crammed with tree decorations on any number of themes, from retro bells to bordello-style feathers and fur and no end of Scandi-style wooden hearts and stars. There are carrier bags of wreaths and candles and stockings and candy canes, tree skirts, and angel hair, and about 150 miles of lights, tinsel and ye olde silver bells.

Ironic Yuletide stuff

There’s ironic Yuletide stuff from Habitat and Urban Outfitters, old biscuit tins full of concertina-style paper streamers, a massive Santa Claus wearing spectacles and cycling a penny-farthing, cribs both traditional and quirky, my prized 3ft-high icicle candlesticks and a complete Victorian village scene (more of which later).

I’m a Christmas addict, but my gigantic collection of festive tat is starting to get me down. I’m beginning to understand why folks suddenly decide to offload their millefiori paperweights or their priceless rows of stamps or Toby Jugs. It’s not that they need the money; they’re sick of the sight of them. I’m not quite there yet, but another few Christmases will do me before I hang up my glistening miniature Santa bootees and do something classy with twigs and moss instead.

You couldn’t call our house classy at Christmas. It’s a full-on assault of the senses: Christmas candles burning; Christmas songs on, day and night; Christmas lights climbing over doorways and mantelpieces and wrapped around trees outside.

The tree has to be a ceiling-scraper as well as wide and bushy. We don’t like gaps. The branches have to be strong enough to take the hand-blown Venetian baubles as well as the handmade salt-dough ones from Montessori days. Everyone has their favourites, but high on the list are the glittery fish, the fat fairies, the feather-tailed birds, marmalade cats, the old silvery musical notes from Woodies, the white reindeers, the glass reindeers, the gold-painted wooden stars, the tinsel tassels, the long-bearded Santas, the Chinese-looking Santas, the dancing ballerinas, now mostly amputees, the very old baubles from a charity shop that are lovely 1950s pink and green, and angels of all shapes and sizes.

Good baubles die young

My favourite angel might have cost £67 sterling a decade ago, but at least she’s still intact. In my experience, the really beautiful baubles die young.They come into the house in their tissue-lined boxes, have a year or two of glory in the glow of the fairy lights, and then inevitably slip off the tree and roll under my foot just as I step back to admire our handiwork. Cheap baubles live forever.

It's a communal effort, the tree, and there's no stopping until every last figure is up there, and all the lights are on, and the actual top-of-the-tree fairy, a flirty-looking creature with her nipped-in waist and flowing hair, is attached with the usual bit of garden wire and a light taped to the back of her head. All this to Fairytale of New York played over and over.

There have been accidents over the years My gold-sprayed hydrangea heads caught fire and scorched the walls. Another year, the tree fell down, taking pictures off the walls on the way down and leaving bits of broken baubles forever lodged between the floorboards. The inevitable power cut when the Victorian village is switched on. This monster takes up most of the hall and comes complete with little figures, fake snow and small batteries that make even tinier figures jerk – they used to glide – around on a mirrored pond. It’s lovely but do we need it? Too late to be asking that.

I’ve thrown it out casually that we could go simple and silvery this Christmas, but nobody is buying it. The show will go on. The cabin in the woods will have to wait.

COMPETITION: BECOME KING OR QUEEN OF THE BAUBLES

The bockety reindeer that looks like a demented donkey your three-year-old made in creche; the weary-looking but still beautiful fairy handed down for three generations; those clip-on toadstools; that hand-painted wooden rocking horse; the cheap-as-chips and slightly faded glitter ball that’s as much a part of Christmas as the pudding. Now that you’ve hoiked them all down from the attic and out from under the stairs, we want to hear about your best-loved Christmas baubles and the funny, sad, poignant stories behind them.

Send your photos and the story of your bauble in no more than 150 words to mybestbauble@irishtimes.com by Wednesday, December 17th, to be in with a chance of being crowned King or Queen of the Baubles and landing our star prize of a break with dinner for two sharing in Gregans Castle, Co Clare, courtesy of Ireland's Blue Book.

You can also enter on Twitter or Instagram using #mybestbauble. A selection of the best Christmas baubles will be published in The Irish Times and on irishtimes.com on Monday, December 22nd, when the winner will be announced.