Christmas tree ornaments

Can't remember what else I snorted at, but you're in fine form today, George.

Growing up we always had a Charlie Brown Christmas tree. We were convinced my mother searched for the tree with the fewest branches and biggest gaps. She'd say, "it will be fine once it's decorated", and she was right. It was fine.

The final event of decorating our family tree before putting the star on top was adding the silver-colored tinsel. She insisted that it be hung one strand at a time and we kids (being kids) got incredibly impatient with that process and started throwing it up in the air towards the tree from half way across the room. She'd then spend time readjusting the tinsel strands every time she walked past the tree (I tend to do the same thing with my icicles).

My parents eventually bought a small artificial tree in their later years but she'd kept her ornament collection intact throughout. The first year after my father died my mother and brother hauled out the tree and ornaments and decorated her place for Christmas. She didn't "bother" after that. Instead she had a small ceramic tree with lights that my SIL made for her in a ceramics class and we'd send a small Jackson and Perkins type pre-decorated live tree that my brother would plant outside in the spring.

She was listening to a local radio show one morning and heard a story about a family who had no Christmas decorations. She called the station and asked them to contact the caller who had just been speaking. They got in contact with each other and she told him he could come over and help himself to her artificial tree and any of the "ancient" ornaments she wasn't using any longer. He was thrilled and was nearly in tears when he left. She said it was the best Christmas present she'd ever given to anyone.

I don't do the tree thing, and have no ornaments. However, as a child, there were ornaments i really loved. We had the glass iciles, and we always put silver-foil "snow" on the tree, and we had a star, glass balls, etc. My favorite, though, were the gnomes. These were brightly painted little wooden figures with arms and legs which flopped around wildly when you tugged at the string which hung out of the bottom of each such ornament. I think someone told me they were German. All the little children as the years went by loved those best, and would stand at the tree interminably tugging the strings and making the gnomes dance.

Mine is not so much the ornaments but the tree itself.
Purchased at Kmart on a day my mother had not enough money and raced me to the car embarrassed to search for change. She ultimately made the decision to write a check. I knew she didnt have enough.

It was a small plastic tree.

It is in my living room now, over 25 years old.

My dead grandmother used to put it up.

My aunt melanie used to help too before she was not able to walk.

My childhood best friend has had his hands on it as well.

Even my first husband.

i dont care what hangs from it, I just care that it still goes up.

there are a couple of full-size ones at hamburger's house. a special one I bought myself in Germany in 1971, and one I bought for mrs. hamburger a couple of decades later

there are also a couple of miniature ones that mrs. hamburger used on the little tabletop tree she used in the last decade

that tree's so small, most of our old ornaments don't fit.

My favourite ornament is a bell that belonged to hamburger's grandparent. I broke its mate over 40 years ago

Scott Mills from BBC Radio 1 made this SuBo angel for the top of his tree

our family had several large cartons of ornaments dated back several generations most glass and porcelean with some hand carved wood ones. When he sold his house 4 years ago he threw them all in the trash, Lady Diane also had boxes of ornaments from her mother back in Tucson but they were left in Connecticut when she moved back west. We have a 2 ' predecorated tree in a box in the closet we will put on the lamp table between our reading chairs, probably next week.

One of the reasons we collect ornaments every year is so that we can give our kids a "starter set" when they form their own families.

We have of course new things bought or given, but some are old like these heartshaped decorations. We made them ourselves and there are supposed to be filled with goodies.
http://www.google.de/imgres?imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/Julehjerter.jpg&imgrefurl=http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fil:Julehjerter.jpg&h=428&w=640&sz=144&tbnid=q7YqJMJP79qtBM:&tbnh=92&tbnw=137&prev=/images%3Fq%3Djulehjerter&hl=de&usg=__BMOXRujl1JV5ST1oNHeaYDrq8UY=&ei=lRIgS5P1C9yM_Ab20uSPDA&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=1&ct=image&ved=0CAwQ9QEwAA

Also I have a string of all the pre WWII European flags and other flags too.
One is missing and that is the German flag which someone tore off as soon as
WWII started.
It is not really a tree ornament, but always been standing by the tree and it must be around 70-80 years old. Don´t know when it came into the family.
A nicely decorated papersack to hide the gifts in. It is now so worn that I don´t dare to put gifts in it anymore. We use it now for putting the wrapping paper and strings in after we have opened the gifts.

Of course we have very old Julbockar by the tree too. Otherwise it would not be Christmas

I had to look this up.
I'd never heard of a Yule Goat before.
Dominic the Italian Christmas Donkey, yes.
Yule Goat, no.

The biggest julbock in the city of Gävle. Hopefully it won´t be burnt down
Read the history here

http://epi.gavle.se/gk/t_english.aspx?id=9138

here is the history

http://epi.gavle.se/gk/t_english.aspx?id=20994

When I started to read about it, I thought that burning the Yule Goat was a
part of the tradition. Apparently, it is not. Why do they do it? Vandalism?
Some sort of statement?

Vandalism - sorry to say

. . . and sorry to hear.

Tomorrow, I bring the ornaments, lights and other decorations out of storage.
Fortified with eggnog, Christmas music, and lots of memories, we'll put up our
tree.

to-morrow I will buy our tree. We Swedes usually don´t put up the tree until the 23rd. But I am almost finished with the house decorations

I have a Hungarian friend who follows a similar tradition.
He puts up his tree on Christmas Eve.

I wish I'd waited a bit to put up a tree. Mo insits it "makes his brain hurt" to see presents he can't open.

Today I saw an ad in the paper reading:



Do you ever wonder if companies have people who read boards like this just to feel out what might be buzzing around?

I always liked the approach best where the tree was up - but undecorated - until the 24th - and no presents went under it until the tree was ready for reveal.

Friends of the hamburgers had their tree in their dining room which marvellously (to weeBeth's thinking) had curtained French doors. The undecorated tree could occasionally be seen in the week prior to Christmas. Then the door was shut, the curtains were drawn ... and then SUDDENLY there was a grand reveal on the 24th.

I haven't put up a tree in a while, but when I still did - no presents went under til the 24th (and we open them on the 24th).

BBB used to decorate elaborately themed trees with each year being a different one. Ones that I can still remember after all these years are the one with pink-flocking and pink grapevine ornaments, a red cardinal and red ornament tree; a gold tree with gold birds, ornaments and tinsel; and a tree with a Babes In Toyland theme of ornaments.

Presents were put under the tree early on until my brother and I got busted one year unwrapping and re-wrapping the presents to see what they were ahead of time. She got her revenge by wrapping up a bunch of lava rocks in boxes the next year. After that, the challenge became finding good hiding places to stash the presents until Christmas morning. One year she gave my brother a huge box that had a series of smaller boxes inside them, each wrapped in different wrapping paper, until finally he got to the smallest box and found a wrist watch.

For my own trees, I rarely had glass ornaments after the first years when my cats played baseball with them and flung them all over the house before smashing them. After that I started making my own ornaments with yarn and styrofoam. Years later I had a group of friends at the company I worked at who used to exchange homemade ornaments with each other. I kept most of them until I recently moved to New Mexico and had to pare down all my belongings.

A few days before Christmas I check the electrical candles.
The 23rd we decorate the tree but not until the 24th the lights go on.
The presents are not put under the tree until the 24th.
All touching and gussing I avoided one year by not putting tags on. I had numbers on the presents and list with the same number and the name for whom it was.

A very nice tradition in Scandinavia is to have a vers to be read before you open the present. My father was an expert in making good verses matching the gift without being able to guessing what it was. Of course it takes much more time until everything has been opened

In parts of Scandivia we have boiled ricepudding Christmas Eve as dessert with one almond. In Denmark you get a small gift if you get the almond. In Sweden you have special ricepudding verses. They are really called porridge rimes and goes back to having fun making up verses or rimes when having porridge. Now it is only around Christmas.