Our ugly Christmas cactus brings a certain festive spirit to our home

December is in full swing and, in an effort to make things a little more festive, my fiance and I have opened up the box we marked “Christmas decorations” last year and stuffed under the bed. “I’m sure we’ve got some baubles or lights or something,” I said, as we dragged the cardboard out from under the bed, releasing a cloud of dust to the absolute delight of our cat, who immediately rolled in it. We’d divided up the decorations we bought last year with our old flatmate (who moved in with his girlfriend after our lease ended, leaving the mad cat behind). We’d managed to make things quite festive last year with some well-placed tat from Target, after all.

It turns out that the spoils we took from that period of our lives were: two spare pillowcases (not festive); one winter coat with a suspicious smell in a size that fits neither of us; and – the piece de resistance – a large plastic Christmas cactus. If, for some reason, you are not familiar with the concept of a Christmas cactus, I can tell you (since I’m currently staring right at it) that it’s a green furry structure with twinkling lights inside, fuzzy multicoloured balls stuck to its “spikes”, plus a scarf with a plastic sprig of holly was tied round its green neck and a Santa hat balanced jauntily on its largest branch. We looked at each other as we grimly got to constructing this monstrosity in our living room-cum-bedroom-cum-kitchen. Neither of us was willing to admit that it was the most hideous thing we had ever seen, probably only useful for foreshadowing the King George-esque madness we will inevitably both descend into within a few short months.

In other words, we’ve decided to put our presents under it.

Hours after the ugly cactus became an integral part of lives, I began to take a shine to it. It does bring a certain festive spirit to our weird little hovel, after all. It does somewhat compensate for the methodical banging of the neighbour’s pitbull’s head against the wall, and the fact that someone keeps opening our Amazon boxes in the entryway and stealing our pillowcases. And the cat seems to like it, even if he does keep trying to steal its Santa hat.

Yes, I took a shine to the cactus eventually, and started embracing how quirky and interesting it made us to have eschewed the traditional tree in favour of a desert plant humorously unsuited to Christmas. I enjoyed telling people we’d gathered our gifts around a cactus. When the Thursday night editor at The Independent – the London-based counterpart who I hand over to at the end of the New York day – asked me politely how my holiday preparations were going, I told him that I’d set up my Christmas cactus and that was enough for me.

“Oh, same here,” he said, nonplussed.

“Very funny,” I shot back. “I know a Christmas cactus is a bizarre thing to have, but that’s just what I’m like. Off-beat. Hipster. Living life on the boundaries of what’s acceptable to society. Please don’t make fun of me.”

“No, really! I have my own,” he said, and sent over a picture of a much taller, more resplendent, non-plastic cactus which could have been plucked straight out of the sands of Arizona, decorated with real baubles and topped with a handmade angel crafted using a photograph of his own face. It stood proudly against a lovingly decorated fireplace and below an assortment of tasteful, expensive-looking decorations.

Needless to say, that showed me. I looked back at the knee-height plastic monstrosity and said, simply: “Oh, I don’t have a photo of mine.”

Then I closed my laptop and turned the Target cactus to the wall.