GOT your Christmas tree(s) up yet? Is your house festooned with more lights than Blackpool? Do you have a herd of illuminated reindeer grazing in your garden? No, me neither.

Christmas, as the cliche goes, really does seem to get earlier each year - and, it seems, increasingly competitive among householders.

I'm of the old school when it comes to festive decorations, reluctant to put my tree up more than two weeks before Christmas, largely because I like my tree real and I don't want it to be bald by Christmas Eve.

If I were trendy and on-style, of course, I would be putting up a fake tree, with 2018, apparently, being the year of the faux Christmas tree - people paying up to hundreds of pounds for artificial trees. A national paper last week devoted much of its weekend style section to the thorny issue of "Is your Christmas tree 2018 enough?" and featured astronomically expensive artificial trees and bespoke decorations.

Me, I prefer the annual mild panic of trying to find the perfect real tree, complete with the traditional marital spat over size, shape and cost. Last year, our tree-buying outing involved two trips to the purveyor: one to buy the thing and the second to get someone to cut the trunk down for us so we could actually get it into its stand.

There's an element of brinkmanship about buying a real Christmas tree. I usually hold out till mid-December but as a soon as I pass cars with trees strapped to their roof racks I start to panic that I'm missing out on the pick of the crop.

But it's outdoors where things now get really competitive; and if your house hasn't got lights galore and plastic Santas scaling the drainpipes you're deemed to be letting the side down.

One street in Hampshire goes so overboard with the decorations that it's led to something of a rift between the neighbours, with one family reported to have moved out of their home because they couldn't take the strain. On the plus side, the residents have raised more than £70,000 for local causes from their efforts, so it's hard to feel unsympathetic to their efforts.

Here in south Cumbria, we're reasonably restrained with our decorations - I clocked only a few houses with festive lights all over the place before December had even started. The jury is out on which is the most festive street/house in the area, although I expect debate will rage as we get nearer to the big day.

For my money, the house at Cark which puts on an amazing display in aid of charity is the best in the area. In the meantime, my house will remain resolutely unadorned until next weekend at the earliest. Humbug, anyone?