When your christmas tree is ready to assemble, who does the honours?

I don’t have a tree at my place; we don’t have enough space and I can’t be bothered to put up twinkly lights that will attract naughty kitties.

At my family home, though, my dad puts the artificial tree together, then my mom straightens out all the branches. My sister and I go over for an afternoon and we all decorate the tree together. It’s been that way since we started to use an artificial tree. When I was little, we’d all go to choose a tree, then my dad would set it up in the stand before the gals attacked with tinsel.

The annual trek to the roadside tree selling place underneath the dark overpass and next to the abandoned building is generally embarked upon on the last weekend before xmas. This is done not by plan or desire, but by desperation. Every weekend we promise ourselves, but alas, to no avail.

We then sort through all the trees, and inevitably, having left it to the last moment, the trees are all dry and we only have a selection of a white pine or some other long-needled piece of a sorry excuse for a tree. Eventually some form of consensus is reached, a tree is selected, tied to the top of the car and driven home through the sleet, which descends the instant we started looking through the lot.

Upon reaching home, it’s in to the house to get the leather gloves (to keep the pitch away, and thence to the car to drag the tree into the living room, shedding leaves and other schmutz on the way. Then, realizing we forgot to attach the base, we drag the tree outside to saw and hammer until reaching a point where it seems like the tree may not fall over…. at least until after the ornaments are on it.

Erecting the tree requires the precision of a chip maker. Liftings here, tightenings there, a glance through the surveyers glass, until, at last the tree is perfectly aligned to the room, the starts and the corners of the universe.

And this is only the first day…...

The wife and I put together the tree and hang the lights together, but I do all the rest of the decorating myself.

My girlfriend and I do it together.

My husband, son, and I all work on it together normally. This year it will just be my son and me putting it up and decorating it.

@wundayatta I absolutely love your answer. I’d give it 5000 lurve because it is my childhood Christmas experience brilliantly described! Add in dad swearing at the missing bolt from the stand replaced with a zip-tie that holds until the antique “priceless” heirloom ornaments are in place, more swearing and sitting at the coffee table with shards and a bottle of Elmer’s glue.
Ah, holidays.
Now that I live alone, I have a pre assembled tree that can remain intact in the basement until I bring it upstairs and plug it in. One less step between me and egg nog.

I usually just take the bag off.Stand back! It is a full 2 feet.

We have a fake plastic tree. My dad prefers it this way. Usually the weekend after Thanksgiving, my brothers and I will bring the tree in from the garage along with four boxes of ornaments. Untangling the lights is always the most frustrating part of the job. Then we add our baby ornaments, the topper, and then load up the rest of the branches. It’s my favourite part of the holiday because the three of us are such goofballs. We have a blast teasing one another and poking fun at the more kitschy ornaments.

The rest of the house goes undecorated. We don’t fix up our porch or hang stockings. It’s just the tree in the living room. And it stays there for a damn, long time.

Once we move out, I’m not sure whether my parents will even keep a Christmas tree. Either they will make us pay a visit to assemble it or they just won’t have one. I had never thought about this until right now. Hm. Maybe I’ll ask my mum later.

My husband outs the tree in the stand. Then he usually helps me with the lights. Then I usually put most of the rest of the decorations on. He usually puts the tree topper on, because I am vertically challenged.

I do it all. It’s preferable to listening to , at the least, complaining. A cheerful helper would be nice, though. (-:

I just finished putting mine up about an hour ago (an artificial one), along with all the other household decorations. When the whole family is back home tonight, we’ll put on all of the ornaments. We usually spend a good deal of time reminiscing, and trying to remember – “Where did this ornament come from”?

I put up a real tree the week before Christmas, and take it down on New Year’s Day. One of my daughters does the honors. It’s generally a small tree, up on a tabletop, and takes less than an hour to put together. I have several sets of ornaments, from various family members, themes, etc. Some years we make ornaments, like origami, to put on it. My daughter likes the decorations up, and generally will take charge of decorating the house.

I do, they take care of the Menorah.

That would be me. We got a new tree last year that is pre-lit and its two pieces fold out. It’s much easier than the tree with the branches that have to be stuck into the frame. I also do the rest of the decorating, but will sometimes stop and say, “Where do you think this should go?” if I’m looking for a new spot for something.

By the way, if anyone needs post-holiday spending money, I hate taking the stuff down and putting it away. I’m looking to hire someone to handle that!

We used to get a live tree every year until my Dad started to get up there in age and thought that it was too much trouble (although we all missed the scent of real pine). So we got a really nice fake tree that already had the lights on it that came apart in 3 sections. It looked great, but was kind of cumbersome to assemble and even harder to shove back into the box and then try to store (by a pulley system that Dad made to hoist it up to the garage ceiling).

Dad had heart surgery last year and we didn’t even take the tree out of the ceiling because it’s a 3 person job to get it down with the pulley system. So we got a cute little tiny fake tree that we decorated (but couldn’t use most of our hundreds of ornaments)

This year because my Dad really shouldn’t be handling anything that heavy, I suggested that we not attempt the big tree, so my folks ended up getting a brand new fake tree that is the same height as the other one, but my mom pointed out that she could lift it by herself and the box is smaller, due to the fact that it folds up more compactly and it can fit easily into the downstairs closet. Yea! Now we can bust out all the old ornaments, enjoy a beautiful tree and Dad doesn’t have to hurt himself and I can dis-assemble it and put it away myself.

We will be offering the other tree to my cousins, who if they want it, will have to come over and help me pulley it down from the garage ceiling. I’m guessing that it might stay there for awhile.

I used to do it, with the help of my son and grandsons, but they aren’t interested in helping anymore, so it just stays in the box.

We have a 5ft fake tree which I used to decorate with my partner, then my daughter would help as she got older, and now she does it all herself.

@YARNLADY Maybe all of us Fluters can come over to your house and help you set it up : )

@Kardamom That would be appreciated. I could make some popcorn and warm hard cider.

My 13 foot tree is about to be finished being erected. Decorating takes another few hours. I would include a picture but I don’t know how to link photos or videos yet. (not that bright)
But my tree sure is with 2–3 thousand lights it beats chevy’s (christmas vacation) by miles!

@thekoukoureport You taught me everything I know about outdoor illumination.

I will post a short video on youtube this eve.. when we are done hanging the decorations.
but I am talking indoor illumination outdoor is a different video.