Áilín Quinlan: Would you pay someone else to decorate your home for Christmas? |
Oh, what would I give?
To come home from work to find the house transformed into a childhood Christmas fantasy.
To walk in the door and see a tall, dignified Christmas tree in the hall, a Christmas tree that I did not have to purchase, haul home, erect and decorate.
To dreamily gaze at a staircase elegantly draped in great, thick, forest-green swags bedecked in red and gold bows that I did not have to struggle with.
To put a match to the fire and watch the flames leap beneath a mantelpiece wreathed in glowing fir garlands sprinkled with red Christmas berries and frosted pine-cones that I had nothing to do with.
To walk through doors professionally festooned with wreaths and festive bows?
I’d give anything.
Anything.
True; the end result of Christmas decorating is often blissful.
It’s also true that the job itself can be murderous, time-consuming, tiring and frustrating, even when you did your utmost the previous year to put away the festive lights and decorations tidily and carefully.
The question is, though: would you fork out in the region of €550 a day plus VAT for somebody else to decorate your house for Christmas?
Would you pay someone €8 for every one of the 80 or so decorations they hang on your impressively deluxe tree?
Or, and here the mind boggles, would you pay the guts of anything from €3,000 to €30,000 for a full Christmas-time internal/external fit-out of your house?
For someone to source all of your........