Having gone on record as saying I would wait until the last minute to buy the scruffiest, cheapest Christmas tree, I exercised my unilateral opt-out – and impulse-bought a prime stick of greenery.

The tree in question, which stands all of 4ft tall, set me back £39.

I’ll say that again: the tree cost £39. That’s thirty-nine of your devalued English pounds, please. It doesn’t take a genius to work out £39 is almost £40. My grandparents, if they were still with us, would be having kittens many times over.

In the 1970s, a family or four could enjoy a Cliff Michelmore recommended full-board foreign holiday for £40. Surely the value of Christmas trees (average price in 1974 = 83p) can’t have gone up that much in three decades, or even in 12 months.

I paid £29 for a larger tree last year and even that made me gag on my egg nog.

I asked the shop assistant if she had anything cheaper. No, she didn’t. Why were they so expensive? The cost of trees had gone up, she said. Something about a shortage.

This, of course, is rubbish. Trees need two things to thrive: mud and rainwater, both of which are free.

The Christmas tree industry attracts incidental labour costs for felling and transportation, which I have assessed as working out at 27p per tree. I haven’t heard stories of rampant forest fires wiping out hundreds of acres of firs, pines and spruces.

Neither have I come across reports of localised plagues of locusts descending on tree plantations, or spells of sub-Saharan droughts.

So what gives? Who’s taking us for a sleigh ride?

Hyper-inflationary pressures on the Christmas tree market makes people do extraordinary things. An acquaintance revealed how she and her partner once got so plastered at a popular Christmas market, possibly one selling German beer, that they “walked away with” a tree.

Naturally, I wouldn’t condone such behaviour but it gives in insight into the strains we are all under.

As I stood in the shop, attempting to size up the perfect specimen – because for £39 it had better be perfect – a young couple came in, bright-eyed, bathing in the rapture of purchasing a tree.

Perhaps it was the first time they had bought one together, for their suburban love nest. Had there been mistletoe nearby they would have jumped under it for a snog and a festive feel.

How quickly their misty-eyed pleasure turned to grey-faced despair when they spotted the cost of the trees. In that moment, Christmas died for these young lovers.

They ended up buying a few sprigs of dismembered fir, salvaged from a tree that had been dragged along the A38.

“We’ll make a lovely wreath,” said the man. And get a plastic tree down the road, at Home Bargains.

Really, I should have followed their lead. Plastic’s not fantastic but I’d have an extra 30 quid in my back pocket. I could treat myself to lunch at Purnell’s for that. The children and my wife would be miffed but they’d get over it.

But a fake tree ... it’s just not me. They are fine once you hit 60, when lugging around a real tree has health and safety implications. In fact, old people, except the Queen, should have plastic trees. It’s traditional.

And as they get older and are recycled over the years, they take on their own character (trees, not people).