Crackers about Christmas

THE Stackhouse family would be the first to admit they are crazy about Christmas. During the festive season, their attractive old, stone house, which sits in an idyllic position overlooking the duck pond on their pretty North Yorkshire village green, is transformed.

From the beginning of December, this tastefully decorated five bedroomed home, complete with stone flag floors, large kitchen range and original fireplaces, is festooned with a gloriously lavish array of Christmas decorations.

But the seasonal makeover wouldn’t be complete without the inflatable Santa Claus which hangs outside one of the bedroom windows every year: “People in the village say they know the Christmas season has begun the moment they see Santa up on the wall again,” laughs Sue, an intensive care nurse. She and husband Jonathan, an export director, boast not one, but four Christmas trees, each carefully and elaborately decorated on a different theme with ornaments bought from their travels all over the world, including an annual family visit to a small town in Germany, especially to buy decorations from their favourite Christmas shop.

More than 1,500 sparkling, shiny and colourful hand-painted items are stored in dozens of cardboard boxes in the attic and putting them all up takes four days, with Jonathan spending about four hours alone fixing around 200 individual delicate glass baubles by hand across one ceiling.

“It takes a long time to put up and an equally long time to put away again,” says Sue, who is in no doubt that it is worth all the effort. For each and every decoration, lovingly hand-picked, holds special memories. “The house is decorated for our pleasure, not to impress anybody else,” she says.

The moment you walk through the door of the house, you are hit by the mass of colourful witty and amusing festive decorations hanging from twigs and branches, which have been fixed all the way along the hallway ceiling. But this is just a taste of what is to come. In the main living room, alongside a beautiful period-style fireplace that looks like it has been made for hanging stockings, stands a tree covered in about 200 Santa figures: “It has got to the stage where no more will fit,” says Sue. “They weigh the branches down.”

The elegant, dark red dining room has a tree decorated in spectacular white and silver, featuring icicles and snowflakes, along with frost-encrusted garlands and baubles throughout the room. In the hallway, another tree is covered in reindeer and snowmen. And a small fir in the study boasts more intricate and quirky designs, including a Christmas pudding with legs.

Sue and Jonathan, along with daughter Olivia, 25, and son Marius, 22, have always loved Christmas, but their passion for decoration has grown over the 20 years they have been in the house, which was dilapidated and near derelict when they moved in. “Olivia was five and Marius 18 months old when we moved here. At our previous house, we used to decorate the tree with hundreds of baubles. It just grew from there,” says Sue.

Their first Christmas in this home looked very different to those of recent years. The family moved from Stockport for Jonathan’s work and also to be closer to his parents, who lived in Harrogate: “The only way we could afford a house in this area to fit all our furniture was to buy one that was an absolute wreck. “The floors were rotten and the ceilings fell in. There was no heating, the wiring was from the Fifties and it needed a new roof. We absolutely gutted the house, and half of it ended up in the skip,” says Sue.

Simply making the house habitable meant that interior decoration had to be put on hold: “We were totally naïve about how much it would cost,” says Sue, adding that they made do with a cheap, second hand kitchen for the first ten years: “It hasn’t been an overnight thing.”

Although they bought the house in March, they didn’t move in until the October and, even then, the walls were bare plaster, there was no carpet, only underlay on the bedroom floors, and none of the painting and decorating had begun. “That first Christmas Livvy, who was five, made a full Nativity scene out of painted cut-out figures which we stuck on the plaster walls to bring some colour to the living room.”

At that time, the family had already inherited a collection of beautiful red and gold glass baubles from Jonathan’s father’s window display business after it closed down, which they still hang today. But it was when Jonathan travelled to the medieval gated town of Rothenburg in Germany for work and discovered the specialist Christmas decoration shop, Kathe Wohlfahrt, that the family started to fully indulge their love of all things Christmas.

“Jonathan brought back some unusual baubles - white, silver and frosty blue - which we still use.” The family decided to travel there together the following year, staying in a hotel next door to the all-year-round Christmas shop," says Sue. “We first went about 20 years ago and have been nearly every year, mostly in October half term, since then. We just love Rothenburg – it’s magical, like something out of a fairy-tale, like going back in time.”

Originally they drove: “We used to take the car over and load it up with decorations. Today we fly and bring baubles back with us on the plane, organising for items like Christmas trees and garlands to be posted on.” Now they are no longer restricted to school term times, they travel in early December and visit the Christmas markets too.

Sue reckons they have spent many thousands of pounds on decorations over the years. “We are given gingham lined baskets to fill in the Christmas shop, which seem small. But once they are a quarter full with baubles, that amounts to about £100 worth," she says.

Their collection of wooden, hand-painted ornaments is probably worth thousands of pounds, says Sue. Two resin Nativity sets, one for each of child, cost about £200 each, while just one hand-painted glass bauble costs about £8. “And when you break them, that’s it. No sticking with Superglue,” says Sue.

Each individual item, she says, holds special memories. “We will remember where we got them from and what we were all doing at the time.” She points to one Father Christmas decoration they bought on holiday in New York last July: “We came across a Christmas shop in Little Italy. That brings back so many happy memories.” Her favourite item is a model of Santa Claus on Christmas Day. “He’s in the bath with his boots, hat and coat hung up. That’s my absolute favourite. The Father Christmas theme is one I can’t resist, if I see one I have to buy it.”

Although she does confess to wearing Santa hat earrings and installing Christmas toilet paper featuring Santa and his reindeer in the downstairs loo, where a sign ‘Don’t get your tinsel in a tangle’ hangs on the door, she does draw the line at anything too tacky. “One lot of loo paper showed Santa sitting on the toilet. That was a bit much," she says.

The family has established their own December 25 traditions. “We used to be up from about 3 or 4am with the children, but now it is more like 9am,” says Sue. “For breakfast we always have home-made pork pie, along with some Champagne or bucks fizz. My grandad was a butcher and would kill a pig for Christmas and we’d make a pork pie, that’s what I grew up with”

Presents are opened after breakfast, in front of the open fire in the lounge, and Olivia and Marius still get their treat-filled Advent calendars and stockings on Christmas Day: “The first year I tried not putting out any sacks they complained.”

Sue goes to Tamworth every year to buy their Norfolk Bronze turkey: “We usually eat at about 4pm and if I am at work the rest of the family starts it off for me. I so look forward to my Christmas dinner, if it didn’t take the shine off having it on the day, I would have it more often.” She bakes the Christmas cake in September and also makes her own Christmas pudding, while daughter Olivia makes the mince pies every year: “My mum died when I was 13 but I remember stirring the Christmas pudding with her. She would be proud of me making my pudding now," says Sue.

Sue loves having her children home again. “I know they will be back for Christmas for those two or three days," she says. "They get excited, it’s like they are children all over again. I am always sorry when it’s over.”