How Do You Decorate Your Christmas Tree?

Hiya Walter ~ decorating for Christmas has always been a favorite past-time and I'll miss it this year. (No energy.)

When I do decorate my tree, I start the lights from the top and work my way around (There are never enough lights on the tree, so this is time consuming ~ especially for my impatient son). All of my ornaments are either home-made or 'special', i.e. given as gifts. My son's contributions from grade school make up for 75% of the ornaments ~ my tree is more like a walk down memory lane.....and I wouldn't change it for all the money in the world.

(P.S. A#1 son knows I'm not putting a tree up this year ~ told him we'd compromise and decorate the cat.....Poor Paddy!)

We, too, have an assortment of sentimental ornaments and I can remember where almost all of them came from (used to be all but the memory is getting a wee bit foggy of late and I can't remember who gave what for some of them). My favorites are the ones the kids made, too. We've painted plaster ornaments together and done shrinky-dink type ones, too. Plus I still have many of the glass balls from the very first Christmas tree my husband and I had (34 years ago). I figured by now they'd all be broken but they have survived somehow. Also have a bunch from nice places we've visited over the years.

Generally, now that the kids are gone, I get to do the whole decorating thing (hubby's not much interested in such things) so I get to do it the way I want to do it. It has relieved some of the tension left over from being the youngest of 7 children and thus never being able to do the tree the way I wanted to do it.

We must be middle-aged.
At Christmas instead of a tree and tinsel and decking all the halls, we now meet the kids for sushi, and exchange cards full of money and gift certificates. Then we kiss the grandbaby and head for the airport to spend the holiday on the sands of Florida.
When we did have a tree we used the glass balls that I bought when the boys were babies. (The price tag is still on some of the boxes, one dozen for $1.99 from Woolco.) We still have all the decorations that they made in school too; paper angels and Christmas trees with heavy doses of glitter. There is also a host of other specials, the little sled Uncle Brian sent one year, the brass choir boys from Nana and at the top the embroidered angel. After using the same twinkle lights for 25 years I switched to the little white lights about five years ago. I put them on a dimmer so I could make the tree just barely glow in the dark.
When the kids were little and had gone to bed, I would pour myself a small drink and sit in the dark for a hour, sipping the whiskey and staring at the glistening tree as if I were some ancestor, staring at the glowing embers of his campfire.

Ohmygoodness.....Woolco......

I love watching the tree.....after everyone has gone to sleep.....the memories come flooding back then.

Our old ones came from Grants and were priced in the same range as yours, Joe. I think I'd have a tree (albeit much smaller) even if nobody but us came to see it. And as long as my kids come for Christmas there will be a tree.

My mother (82) just gets a very tiny one the last few years - which looks rather poor in the big house.Decoration changes from year to year: the is enoigh stuff (some more than hundred years old).

My wife and I always had a small one, too. This years decoration will be in gold.

(All our [small] trees are 'freed' in January, btw = planted in the garden.)

For the first time since I left my parents home I've got a Xmas tree.
It's a hand-me-down from them, they just bought a new one.

So I searched through the bag of decorations she gave me and picked out some trinkets to hang on it, and some tinsel to wrap around it. Wasn't hard.

Take a picture, Wilso. It's your first one.

I just found a picture of my first on-your-own tree. I was living with the mother of my oldest son and he was not quite three at the time. (I later adopted him and she ... well long story, some other time.) But she had, to my horror, no tree and no decorations.
And of course, we had no money. So I told her to make a couple of big bowls of popcorn and that I would be right back. I went out to the lake where a friend of mine had a little store and was selling trees off a truck. A couple of hours of restacking stock in his backroom and I had a nice litttle tree on the top of my VW bug along with two bags of cranberries.
We strung all that popcorn and the cranberries, made big paper snowflakes and then realized we had no treestand. I made one out of a coffee can filled with rocks.
It was a good tree, though a little plainer than the ones that followed. It had no lights, but that made it easy to put outside, still decorated, for the birds to feast on. Several years later during the energy crisis I made one just like it to show some students how they could have a Christmas tree that didn't have to be visible from space.

That sounds like the perfect tree, Joe Nation.

Great tree and memories! Nice to see you, Joe! No tree this year, yet again. Well, it will be a goal for next year to get all the family treasures up again. The old ornaments are always the best for my tastes and my sons.

For those, who haven't got one, here you can order a christmas tree online (ehem, the shipping fees are just for ordinary post - airmail should be slightly more expensive):

Christmas trees to be ordered online

I usually have a live tree - a Norfolk Pine which lives in a pot in the garden the rest of the year. It didn't make it through the winter this year, though - so I'm going out on Saturday to try and find a replacement. Most of the decorations are old - some belonging to my grandmother, or special gifts, etc. And I have a few lights - flashing, but not too flashy!

I may also try and find something tree-ish, but not a tree (perhaps some abstract branch-thingy)- to take to the holiday house.

My mother being allergic to Pine had the artificial trees, starting with the silver tree with all red velvet bows and bells. I still have a few of those, and they are a joy to see every year. I now have a little silver tree as well, and that will serve as my tree this year. I have plopped a Santa Hat on its top, and it looks just lovely.
I have come to greatly adore real trees, theres just nothing like it, and the cats actually enjoy sitting under it, and vary rarely go after the ornaments.
I have a thing about my lights, they have to be super brights, Idont like the color in anyothers. I start at the top and work my way down and make sure the lights go all the way in back and forth while going down, it seems to give it much more depth.
My greatest collection of ornaments came from a time when I had very little, and they mean so much that it still amazes me they cost about $5.00. They are packaged in a wicker box and are wreaths and angels and such of wicker themselves with little bits of red yarn. There are so many in this box that when I bought them, they filled a 4 ft tree. So, although I have bought or recieved some nice ornaments that I put on my tree now, they are still predominent.
My garland is wooden, some hearts and beads, some santa and beads. And, I dont do tinsel but, i did find crystal strands at the craft store that I cut into 4 in strips that I place like tinsel, it works and is less harmful to the cats, easy to clean up too!
On top of it all, an angel.
Love the tree story Joe, just goes to show you what a little creativity can do.

I think however, the funniest tree is my grandmothers...for about 10 years she got a real tree however, shes a bit slanted in a heart warming way and by this you can tell how she loves to laugh.
When purchasing a tree, she finds the small little seller who probably could use the cash more than the guy who has a whole parking lot and 20 kids around, all that.
She approaches, looks around, then find the man in charge and very seriously asks..."wheres the worst tree you have?"
Now, many have thought she was batty, they heard her wrong, etc.
however, she is very serious.
She spends her time finding the worst tree possible, the one no one will buy, the one that wont find a home for Christmas.
She calls it shopping with Charlie Brown.
The trees she has found....I cant even tell you but, I should have pictures of some of them somewhere...its hysterical.
Then she decorates it in a way to pronounce how unliked the tree would be in another home, just to make a point I suppose.
The year she had a tree with no branches in the front top area, barely had branches at all really, and the one it had was like four feet long coming from the top part of the tree, and out into the hall...where she hung one lonely little ornament, that had to be the best tree I ever saw.

Quinn
Great yarn!

Must admit that there has not been an Xmas tree in my home since sometime in mid-50s. Simply became tired of all the commercialism of it. Being in the retail business we were buying Xmas products in the Spring & Summer then applying the pressure starting in early November & now it is much earlier.

Commercialism.....yuck!

I was thoroughly disgusted this year because the Christmas items started coming out the day after Halloween. Used to be Thanksgiving was the start date.

We don't have a tree this year ~ in fact, we only have one decoration up over the front door. That's it. And it's fine with me and Mom. I simply don't have the time this year.

I dont have a tree but, I did take out all the little Christmas thingys and put them around and about my little place to give it a bit o cheer. Guess its too much for some when returning from the powder room one is in astonishment....I dont see a problem with a snowman in there, but I can see where someone might be afraid.