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A Halloween tree! One mum's scarily good Oct 31 tradition

A Halloween tree! One mum's scarily good Oct 31 tradition

Christmas trees aren't just for Christmas! Here's why my family has a Halloween tree – with LOADS of spooky decorations – too

Cat Ferguson

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I’ve always loved Halloween: the dressing-up, the stories, the myths and the spookiness of it all. And I've passed my love of it on to my children, Amelia, 8, Zosia, 3, and Katriana, 2 – with our family tradition of the decorating the Halloween tree.

Halloween is all about embracing your quirky side, opening your imagination and just being a little bit silly. No wonder I love it – my mum once picked us up from school, dressed as a gorilla!

Our 1st Halloween tree was a bit of a 3am plan. It was near the end of October and we'd just moved house. We'd been having a bit of a rough time. Among all the half-opened boxes, I spotted the Christmas tree and decided to put it up. It's a shame the tree only goes up once a year, so why not?

We had a few Halloween decorations and I decided to put them on the tree. When the girls got up in the morning and saw what I'd done, they thought I'd finally lost the plot! But the laughs and amazement on their faces was worth it.

I popped onto Pinterest and found that having a Halloween tree is actually a thing, at least in the US. And that helped give me more ideas. Off we went shopping for more decorations and we had a ball decorating the rest of it!

Now it's our family tradition: tree goes up, and then the huge spider web – complete with Jeremy the spider – goes outside, over the porch roof, while Boris the spider keeps watch inside.

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People actually take pictures of the decorations and the tree! Teenagers sit on my wall taking selfies and my eldest daughter is bombarded with questions from schoolfriends who walk by our house

The tree decorations are completely toddler-friendly at the minute but, as the years go on, they'll change. Our favourite thing on the tree right now is a witch with a broomstick.

Unfortunately, this year, Covid has put stop to Amelia having her usual Halloween Slumber Party , as well as giving her classmates their Halloween treat boxes. We’re just having a family Ghoulish Treat Hunt in the garden – by lantern light, in costumes – instead.

But there's always next year. The kids are already thinking up ideas for the 2021 tree! They'll never be bored of it and it will always be a memory to laugh at, when the kids say, "Mum, remember when you put the Christmas tree up in October!"