For while they parcel up toys, Paul Mather tends the trees under which they will lie.

He is one of just a handful of full-time Christmas tree managers in Britain, supplying shops from Land's End to John O'Groats with trees from Lord Iliffe's Yattendon estate in Berkshire.

Founded in 1999 by the current owners Darren Richards and Andrew Pike, Birmingham-based Dating has experienced rapid growth and now has over 4.5 million members, with nearly 3.5 million of them in the UK.

In 2004 the company was ranked number 35 in the Sunday Times/Microsoft Tech Track 100 fastest growing technology companies.

The UK’s leading online dating agency Dating and its sister company Chemistry are to be sold to the European sector leader Meetic in a deal worth £27.3 million.

But environmentalists need not be alarmed about deforestation, says Mather.

"Christmas trees are a crop just like wheat or strawberries," he says.

"And, being a white wood, many get recycled after use into woodchips for bridleways and footpaths." Happily, most of our trees are grown here, with just a million or so imported annually, mainly from Denmark and Ireland.

Before you do anything else, decide where the tree is to go.