Tree by Tree, Name by Name: The Cold Church Christmas Festival That Made Our Town Feel Small

We very nearly didn't go. It was 6.15 on a Friday in early December, the car was iced over, and the honest truth is that a cold church at the end of a long week sounded like a chore dressed up as an outing. Joe said the words "tree festival" in the tone of a man who has been promised a hot drink and is trying not to hope too hard. Reader, we went. We stayed for an hour and a half. We came out with cold noses, a raffle ticket we didn't win and the strange, warm feeling that we live somewhere specific rather than just near a retail park.

The hand-written sign at the door

The notice on the church gate was done in that beautiful, slightly wonky handwriting that only ever seems to belong to someone's aunt. "Christmas Tree Festival. Fifty trees. Free entry, donations welcome. Mince pies, tea, and a raffle." Somebody had drawn a tiny robin in the corner and then crossed it out and drawn a better one. That was the first clue about the sort of evening we were in for.

Inside, the radiator was doing its best and losing. You keep your coat on. You accept that your hands will be chilly enough to need the tea by the time you reach the second pew. The trees are arranged around the aisles in a loose, slightly chaotic circuit, each one numbered, each one with a small label on a luggage tag. Every tree belongs to somebody: the Brownies, the butcher on the high street, the allotment society, the care home, the year 4 class at the primary school, the woman who does the flower rota and has very firm opinions about it.

What fifty trees can tell you about a town

We started treating it like a puzzle. Walk past the first three and you're just looking at decorations. Walk past ten and you realise you're reading the town.

The men's shed had built a tree out of offcuts and decorated it with tiny tools made from wire. The café on the corner had gone for an all-red theme and a label apologising for the lack of imagination. Somebody's grandmother had lent her collection of baubles from the 1970s and each one had a little card explaining where it came from, including one on a trip to Skegness in 1974. The school tree was a mess in the best way, covered in paper chains and hand-cut stars with names written inside in felt pen. The toddler group had made theirs almost entirely out of something that looked like dried pasta and nobody had the heart to ask.

You learn things. You find out that the physio practice has a surprisingly dark sense of humour. You discover there's a ukulele group. You stand in front of a tree decorated by people you've nodded at for years but never spoken to, and read a label that says "the Thursday night craft circle, open to all" and think, actually, maybe.

The mince pie table is the heart of it

There is a trestle table at the back with a tea urn, a slightly sticky cloth and a plate of mince pies. It is staffed by two women in Christmas jumpers who will not let you get away with just one and who ask, genuinely, whether you're local.

We paid 50p each, which felt like robbery, and stood by the font eating them with the sort of concentrated pleasure you only get from food served in a cold building for a good cause. Joe had two. I had three. The woman behind the urn told us the festival has been running for over a decade and that the trees are up for a vote. You get a slip of paper and a tin, and the winner gets the trophy, which is a small, slightly peeling wooden star that lives in the vestry cupboard for the other eleven months of the year.

We voted for the school tree. So did, it turned out, most of the parish.

The crooked star and the case for small things

At the end of the aisle, near the altar, there was one tree slightly taller than the others. It had a star on top that had clearly been fixed on in a hurry and was leaning at an angle of about twenty degrees to the left. The label said it had been decorated by the residents of the care home up the road. Somebody had pinned a note to the bottom: "We ran out of tinsel. We think it's fine."

It was fine. It was better than fine. Standing there, in the slightly draughty bit near the pulpit, I had the feeling you get when you walk into a room and everyone is glad you came, even though nobody turns around.

This is the thing a shopping centre can't give you. In the big place out by the ring road, everything is designed and lit and slippery underfoot, and you are a customer moving through it. Here you are a neighbour moving through a building that smells of dust and citrus, and every tree has somebody's name on a label. You can't buy anything except a mince pie and a raffle ticket, and the raffle ticket is mostly a way of saying thank you.

Practical notes, because you'll want to go

• Timing matters. Ours ran Thursday to Sunday, which is the usual pattern for these things. Avoid Saturday late morning, when the school mums and the grandparents all arrive at once. Friday evening or Sunday after the 3pm light has gone is where the magic sits.
• Bring cash. Coins, mostly. Mince pies, tea, raffle, and a donation on the door. We saw two people turned away from the raffle because they only had their phones.
• Dress for the building, not the car. You will be in there for an hour, standing still, and the heating is always more hopeful than effective. A scarf is not a silly idea.
• Check your own church first. Look at the noticeboard, the parish newsletter, or the Facebook page of whichever local group you follow. Tree festivals usually land on the second weekend of December, and they rarely advertise widely.
• Go without a plan. The whole point is to read the labels slowly and see who turns up.

Walking back to the car, we passed the butcher's window with its paper snowflakes, and the café with its wonky red tree, and we said the same thing we always say after something like this. That we should do it more often. That the town is smaller than we think, in the best possible way, and that fifty trees in a cold church is a better introduction than any leaflet through the door.