Lately, been thinking of childhood Christmas decorations.

gracy225

gracy225

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Location
New York
I remember mom had so, so many things. She would spend DAYS decorating, especially the tree. (She got a tad obsessive but that's a whole other thread. :)) The cardboard "houses, churches, schools". I don't know what they are called. The life like Santa staring down at you from the archway above (also, a bit creepy. Again for another thread). The train under the tree! (anyone know why the control box was always oily?) My sister and I would play for hours in that little magical village. The ornaments were spectacular and all unique, as were the "Italian" lites among the boughs. I miss it all.
 

We always had a Douglas Fir Christmas tree in our classroom at elementary school. Popcorn garlands and paper chains were the main decorations. Of course there were contests between the boys and girls to make the longest strings/chains. When it came to popcorn garlands, the girls always won because we boys couldn't resist eating our popcorn supply.🎅
 
The first thing we did on our tree was to drape strings of shiny little silver beads and sometimes a mixture of colors. And then we would hang the ornaments. Lastly, we would drape the tinsel one by one like icicles on every branch. I always thought it was so beautiful.
 
Papa did all the decorations on Christmas Eve. 5pm until 11:59pm. He'd arrived from his regular job. None of the extra part-time ones on that night. It was Sacrosanct 😃.

He admitted to me near our last Christmas together, 1973, that the reason he covered every branch of that (he said: "horrible silver artificial tree!") it was his way to make it look much better. Trust me it was and si heavy that it was anchored to the walls at 3 main points.

After his death in early 74, there wasn't any decorations until 78. I took over the Christmas job until I got engaged and left late 84.

K-Mart was where hubby and I got our first. It was a clearance sale of old stock. It lasted 5 years. Hubby got another one, from a work colleague who was moving away after his divorce. That lasted till 97.

All our decorations disappeared in our oversea move. We never found out how or why. Nevermind, we replaced everything and then some. 2016, the last time we shopped in our local HomeBase, as a special gift for our son coming home from hospital.

Got a beautiful umbrella type tree. It's going up round 22-23 December 2023. With the final additions under the tree. Looking forward to it 😸
tempxmas.jpg

This one in 2020. So, location has changed. Oops, last year isn't on tablet. Sorry!
 
There's no effort to decorating anymore. When I was a kid, my dad would go out in the woods and get a tree. Sometimes we'd have a bought one. Then dad would set it in the tree stand and put on the lights, I would hang the ornaments and mom would put on the tinsel (she was particular about how it was draped). Nowadays, people buy a tree in a box that has all the lights and decorations already on it.

Christmas tree.jpg
 
we had a little fake tree just once when I was a kid.. it was small maybe 3 feet hgh, stood on a little plastic tripod, had no lights, but it had a little bit of tinsel on it and stood on the coffee table

The only decorations we had were those we made at school out of crepe paper.. which my mum would hang across the room using thumb tacks..
 
We always had a real tree as a child. Lots of tinsel. As an adult, I only had the artificial trees. I threw out the two big ones a few years ago....too much work for me to put up. I saved a 4ft artificial tree.
 
Well, we had the tree all decorated at home and then we went to our grandparents, and they had their tree up too! All vintage ornaments. Hubby and I put up a tree every year. If I were alone though, no tree.
 
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