Christmas tree ornaments

My mom has a bunch of ornaments that she always puts on the tree.
There is a multi-colored construction paper chain link thing that me and my sister made when we were like around 5. There are also some ornaments that my mom got when she and my father first got together. They are around 30 years old. They are little figures of like kermit and Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus. The cool thing about them is they were all put together by a blind woman.

The first Christmas I spent with my wife, we began a tradition of buying a few ornaments each year. We favored wooden figure ornaments most of the time. Some of the figures are plastic. This year, we switched to the led lighting for the tree. We like them better than the old ones.

When joelittle was small, on the day we’d trim the tree, I’d illicit the help of a neighbour who’d leave three new tree decorations and a Christmas movie at my front door, ring the bell and run away. I’d sign the card “Mrs. Claus,” in shaky handwriting. Where possible, I wrote our names and the year in gold pen, on an unobtrusive spot in very tiny lettering. The first time I had our names and the year engraved on small brass bells.

I still buy ornaments every year and we've got some beautiful ones…all different kinds and colours, glass, metal, wood, fabric, rhinestones…and joelittle will have his own to take with him when he settles down long enough to want to put up a tree.

I like a man who comes with his own ornaments! mrjoe had some really lovely old ones himself when I first met him and they still get pride of place on our tree.

One of my personal favourites is a small, flat, felt dog, hand stitched by mrjoe’s father (now deceased) when grandpajoe was about five years old, more than 70 years ago.

Ooooh!

Nice find.

When E.G. and I moved in together, we each had our own ornaments from when we were kids. There were all kinds of eerie parallels -- we each had crafty aunts who made very similar felt Santas for us, and we even each had ornaments that we made with those aunts, at similar ages, that featured the precise same plastic Santa figurine. Our Christmas stockings also might as well have been made by the same person. (Felt, rickrack, appliqued Christmasy things.) (Mine disappeared at some point, and I made myself a new one in the same tradition.)

E.G.'s mom wrote out the origin and other info about each of his ornaments. I did the same for mine, best I could remember. Every year since then, I've tallied up the new ornaments, so there are now several pages of handwritten notes in the ornament box.

Sozlet just helped me decorate the tree -- we've developed a tradition around it. Christmas music and Christmas cookies. She puts up her own ornaments, lower half of the tree. I put up glass ones and flying ones -- at some point it developed that the flying ornaments (we have a lot of birds but also flying bugs and some fairies) go on the top third of the tree.

The vast majority of them are probably from my mom -- she gives each of us at least one ornament per year, often more than that. Lots of homemade/ artisan stuff, I like most of them.

Sozlet makes them too and those are some of my favorites. She did this great winter scene with birds in 2007, she painted the glaze on a ceramic orb and then it was fired, it's so cool.

The star is a hand-blown glass exploding thingie that's meant to be an ornament -- it was a major splurge for me at a favorite art gallery in Madison. (Don't remember the price but around $25 I think -- I just loved it.)

I always get mushy when I put up the "our first Christmas" silver ornament, bought to fill out the rest of a gift certificate at a fancy place that was a wedding gift.

I could go on and on. Might post some photos of favorites.

Since we mostly only do the pagan parts of Christmas, the Christmas tree is pretty central to our holiday.

Oh I'd love to see photo's!

Took a few with my blackberry -- not great quality but give an idea.

Bird assortment:


Big red one in the middle and little cardinal on the right were chosen by sozlet in stores... there's a vintage red bird ornament (originally meant to screw into a socket) askew at the left, a felt one from my mom at upper left (yellow and red) and a papier mache ladybug from my mom at upper right.

The star:



Crafty aunt elf:



Misc assortment including "our first christmas":



A fairy:

How Wonderful! Love the birds (we have a few old ones too and three new ones this year!). The ladybug - Aieeee - too sweet!

I like the the santa with the obvious specs.

Soz, my tree looks very much like yours - a crazy assortment of colour and texture and materials.

Beautiful. Thank you.

The Lovely Bride is Chinese. She was born in Hong Kong and came here at
the age of ten. She'd had no experience of Christmas and completely fell in
love with the season.

When she got her first apartment (in the Allston student ghetto, for those of
you who know Boston) she got a small tree and started collecting ornaments,
the kind you find at craft fairs and such.

After she got married, she continued collecting. On trips and vacations, she
always managed to find a shop selling ornaments and buy one or two. Once
kids came along she would buy each one an ornament every year. The idea
being to give them their "set" once they started their own household.

Decorating the tree is always good for trips down Memory Lane. "Here's
the dog sled from Alaska." "Hermione's First Christmas". "Rhys's macaroni
wreath". "Where'd we get this from?" "Has Daddy got the lights untangled
yet?"

In Delaware and New Jersey coast , they have these tree ornaments made from Horseshoe crabs and blue claw crabs. They paint the blueclaws a steamed red, and the horseshoe crabs gold and silver. Heres a picture of a horseshor crab "au naturale"

Horseshoe crabs scare the crap outta me. Always have.

They are more closely related to SPIDERS than real crabs.

Doesn't increase my comfort level.
I can't imagine hanging one of those things on a Christmas tree.
Although we did have Power Ranger ornaments at one time.

When I left my first marriage I walked away from all of our belongings, including any Christmas ornaments we'd collected. The following year I was dating Mr B. He was living in his own apartment and had never bothered putting up a tree. We decided to do it together. We bought a live tree, a stand, lights and some basic ornaments. It was simple and kind of plain but it was our first tree.

Over the years we've picked up a few special ornaments each year. My favorites being a collection of glass icicles. We also have a number of wooden ornaments that the kids hung. As they grew older they wanted to do the glass ornaments too. I slowly gave in with the exception of the icicles and the star -- those were reserved for me and always went on last.

We still get a live tree. We have an annual tradition of decorating the tree together with a particular Christmas cd playing (Children's Choir of Bethlehem) and sharing cookies and cocoa with the friends they've invited over to help decorate. They both have a number of Jewish friends who don't put up trees but get a big kick out of helping to decorate ours.

Last year M asked if she could hang the icicles. I said ok. I still do the star.

(Ahahah! <She laughs knowingly> I'm proud of you!)

Have you hung some of those babies on your tree farmerman?

That is, do you put up a tree?

Nice! Thank you all for sharing your ornament stories.

Clearly I'm going to have to quit buying other people's memories and start making some of my own!

Neither Mr. B nor I have any decorations from our childhoods. I wonder why that is......

You've already started, boomer. You'll find them in all kinds of unlikely places.

(I'd like to emend my first post for accuracy, because the felt "dog" is actually a snowman, that at first glance my little one thought was Snoopy).

Really nice stories here, this is lovely.

Could be the same reason I don't have any.
Boring solid-color balls.
(on the tree, that is)