What is on your Christmas tree? (If you have one).

I’m not putting up a tree, but…I just hung some cool blue lights. :-)
When my daughter was growing up we often went on excursions to cut our own tree, and decorated together.

I have a “Charlie Brown” Christmas tree. I was walking past a tree lot, and saw a child accidentally bumping into the tree breaking the top of it. I asked the people working at the lot what they were going to do with it now that it’s broken. They said that I could take it if I wanted it, so I took the top. now it is sitting on my dresser with an origami star on top and a few purple, orange, red and green paper cranes on it.

I haven’t put up the big Christmas tree since my daughter was born. Partly because it’s too much work, and partly because I have cats that I think will take it down in a heartbeat.

Someone suggested I get the little tabletop tree (three feet tall) and get cheap ornaments and let her decorate it. That’s what I’ve done a few years. This year I have a little tree that’s about a foot high that has mini ornaments on it.

My real ornament collection is a great array of everything from Victorian style stuff to handmade stuff to natural stuff like pinecones. You name it, even souvenirs and wedding favors and all kinds of things. I have some great ornaments and I used to try to buy them whenever I had the chance.

Never decorate for Xmas, but my Halloween stuff is up all year, so it just becomes part of my apartment. New stuff keeps getting added every October. I keep thinking I should make a Xmas tree with rubber bats and skulls and stuff in it.

I have a lot of lights put up so far, but I can’t put up my tree until after the new carpets are installed next week. I have boxes and boxes of ornaments from my Mother’s tree 50 years ago, to ornaments made by my oldest son 30 years ago, to ornaments made by me over a 20 year period, to ornaments made by my youngest grandsons over the past five years.

They can’t all fit on the tree I have, so I just put on as many as I and the boys can. Sometimes I change them out over the days I have the tree up.

I just did my tree with the help of my mother last night.. Mostly a mishmash of shit from estate sales (her hobby)... It is a small tree but so is my apartment. And it was only 20 bucks.

http://imgur.com/klVQnaj

Not a fan of the beaded rope things on it but my mom is responsible for that. And I don’t really care much. She is the one that sat on the couch tonight just staring at the tree for a hour.

::Takes deep breath::

Twinkling lights
Glass rockin horses, ballerinas, swans, angels
Gold bells, horses, butterflies, reindeer, bows, hearts, sleighs
Merry Christmas sign
Golden star on top
Glass & gold santa heads.

…& relax.

We have a small home, so we have a small tree. 4 feet high, with a cute little snowman tree skirt. It came prelit with white bulbs, and I added a string of rainbow ones, gold and red tinsel twisted together, and the ornaments Ian and I made last year out of salt dough. The top of the tree has a glittery star and a Pokemon doll. Eevee.

My family had a tradition when my sister and I were growing up—every year we would each pick an ornament (usually from a Hallmark store… not even sure we have any around us anymore). We also had some handmade ornaments and gifts from relatives. So it was an eclectic tree with a bunch of different things I’m not even sure how to describe. Each individual ornament had some sentimental value, and often a story attached.

Mid-teens, my sister and I looked at the tree and decided eclectic-sentimental wasn’t very “pretty.” So that year we asked out mom if we could get glass ball ornaments and make a color-coordinated tree. Well, we scoured stores for sales and found some beautiful red ornaments of all shapes and patterns on great sales. Gold became an accent color, and that worked out well, because our great grandmother’s Christmas star is gold. And it did wind up being a rather striking tree.

These last couple of years we have been pulling more and more of the eclectic-sentimental ornaments out—we started with strictly red ones and have been finding more than fit the “theme” as we dig through the old box every year, so now we have a mixture, and it’s a nice balance.

Ours has lights that alternate between white and green/purpe and red, green and gold glass ornaments. I like tinsel but so does our cat so we no longer put it on the tree.

It used to be the trend to have two trees. I’d see cars with two real trees attached to the roof. Now a lot of my friends on FB are talking about having three trees. If I had a big enough house, I’d love the thought of having a tree here and there – a tree based on a theme or a color in a random spot – bedroom, dining room, living room, foyer, whatever.

Two trees is one too many. THE tree is were people lay their shoes on 24th at night and where Father Xmas will leave the gifts. If there are two trees, that will confuse him.

Our tree has vintage hand-painted glass balls. I got them on the flee market on 77th and Columbus, NYC, years ago. Unfortunately we break a few each year and replace them with new ones but those not so cute.

Matt and I have only managed to collect a small smattering of “special” ornaments so far. We have a huge supply of generic bulb ornaments that fill the rest of the space. Seems we’ll just have to slowly accumulate more ornaments with time.

Of what we have, there are lots of birds. People give me bird stuff.

@jca We could be like the White House and have a tree every 10 feet or so. I’m leaning toward having two trees this year, one in the family room and one in the living room. We’ll be moving a lot of furniture around after the new carpets are installed. Right now, a lot of it is in the enclosed patio, all stacked up.