KEY POINTS:
I love our tradition of going to select the Christmas tree. It's Kate's job to adjudge which tree will be ours and her job to decorate it. Over the years, she's gone from a benevolent attitude of choosing the limp, scraggly orphan trees to a rather more ruthless
process where only the fittest and bushiest need bother presenting themselves for her inspection.
It's a fun part of the Christmas preparation and it really feels like Christmas when the tree is safely installed at home and beautifully decorated. I admire the young kids who sit out in the sun all day, selling trees to earn a bit of extra money. Good on them.
But it appears not everybody thinks the same way.
You would think that with the world economy in freefall and violent crime on the increase, there would be plenty to worry about without inventing problems.
But no - human nature being what it is, there are still nit-picking busy bodies whose mission in life appears to be to bring as much misery to as many people as they possibly can.
What sort of person complains about a banner on a church advertising Christmas trees for sale? Poor old St Barnabas Church on Mt Eden Rd was visited by a council officer after a grinch complained to the council about the banner and a sign.
The officer told the church authorities they must remove the signs and, just in case the message hadn't got through, the church then received a letter threatening a $20,000 fine if the illegal signage wasn't taken down.
St Barnabas is apparently invoked as a peacemaker and for protection against hail storms. Somebody must have whistled him up because the issue was resolved peacefully after Auckland's deputy mayor was contacted and the church was told the signs could stay up.
And so they should. It's not like they were going to be there all year. And a cash-strapped church wanting to raise money to restore its organ must surely take precedence over some idiot who finds the signs offensive/bothersome/breaching the letter of the law.
I hope St Barnabas brings down a stonking great hailstorm on the head of the busy body who made the initial complaint.
And that the misery-guts had a very dreary Christmas.
* www.kerrewoodham.com