What did your childhood Christmas tree look like?
My answer: When I was a young child we had a silver aluminum Christmas tree. The one with the color wheel! The color wheel spun around and had four colors on it, lighting up the faux tree! We children thought it was breathtaking. Even without the color wheel the shiny, shimmering, silver tree was beautiful! Which was good, because my brother Carl sat on the color wheel and broke it. He wanted to spin around and around so he got on the wheel, and after that it was no more -- so we had a tree without changing colors. To put the lights on it was out of the question -- the tree was highly flammable! That is why it came with the color wheel, LOL.
The ornaments were extraordinary. They were the old-fashioned kind. They were mostly glass ornaments. There were your glass round bulbs, but there were also glass figures of almost everything imaginable. There were glass humming birds, religious scenes such as the creche, Santa ornaments and just lots of fun ornaments. Finally there were lots of fun homemade ornaments such as a carrot, raspberry and lacy snowflake I crocheted -- all without a pattern. All six of us kids contributed to making the homemade ornaments so the tree was special.
Later on we gave up the silver tree for a "regular" faux green tree with icicles, but that silver aluminum Christmas tree with the color wheel will always be my favorite!
Now it's your turn. What did your childhood Christmas tree look like?
Please put your answer in the comment section below. If you'd like to write your answer in your own blog, leave a link below so we can check out your answer.
I hope you'll enjoy answering as I enjoyed my Christmas memories. Love you all, Krissy :)
Posts
what a cute tree, Krissy! I had heard of color wheels but didn't know anyone who had one!
ReplyDeleteours was a cut real tree; my mom tried to get one about 5-6 feet; it had an angel with lights on top and the usual assortment of angel, Santa ornaments etc.
Oirs was a frsh cut cedar tree my dad cut every year. It had angel on top the multi colored tree lights, with glass christmas tree balls with painted secereny on then, roping(garland) and ice cycles(tinsel) and etc.
ReplyDeleteFor the most part we did have a real Christmas tree, but one year in the 50's we got one of those aluminum silver trees and everyone thought it was just beautiful. How times have changed. I still like the real ones the best, but haven't had one in years. 'On Ya'-ma
ReplyDeleteWe used to have a pine tree with the multi-color paper chains; skinny strips of twisted metal colored on one side(dangerously sharp); glass balls of various sizes; tinsel; strings of lights, some of which were blown into shapes like a santa, a girl's face, etc.; an angel on top with fiberglass hair and decorations we had made at school. Once we strung popcorn and cranberries, but Mom said it was too messy. After we all went off to school, the trees got less personal and better coordinated.
ReplyDeleteo<\\\;^) Jan the Gryphon
http://gryph-wotd.blogspot.com/
Hi Krissy!!! Found you finally. When I was real small,we always had a live tree with beautiful old glass ornaments. When I was about 12, it became artificial with white lights which I hated. My son has an aluminum one from my ex MIL. Actually, I sort of like that one but not for the familyroom. Love ya for real!
ReplyDeleteWe had a big "fake" tree with red and gold balls. Had the same tree and decorations all through my childhood.
ReplyDeleteMy husband's family had one of those silver trees with the spinning color wheel most of his childhood.... I was lucky enough that when my mother finally did break down and get an artificial tree (I would have been 7 or so), she did at least get a pretty one that -looked- like a live tree. I remember that it was so much cooler not having to worry about tipping over the tree/water or having to clean up all those needles LOL!
ReplyDeleteI am glad you made me remember the aluminum x-mas tree my mother won in a contest. It had the spinning color wheel. I would never have remembered that if you had not written about yours. What a memory to share. Many years we had a real tree. Boxes were brought down from the attic with all the old decorations. The favorite one of everyone was the glass liquid filled different color ones that made bubbles. Val said you might know about a virus in Facebook that has a fix. I have my Blogger/journal now. Wishing you and John a Merry Christmas. mark
ReplyDeleteMy Christmas tree as a child was not much different that my tree as a grandmother. Oh, the tree was real then, and mine is artificial but the decorations are similar. It's full of memories. I have decorations that my children made when they were young. There are ornaments from when I was young, and yes even one from when my mother was young. I love looking at it abnd being reminded of all of the love that has graced my life. Oh, and there is always a new ornament or two, to remind me that the future holds more opportunities to build wonderful memories.
ReplyDeleteMy Christmas tree looked just like yours ;-). Love ya!! Val xox
ReplyDeleteOur Christmas trees were white pines, then blue spruces. We have very special ornaments, highly sentimental that each child or parent has collected or made over the years. Our lights went from white to coloured about the time we switched our type of tree. We now have so many ornaments we bought a 4 foot artificial tree for Irish ornaments only!
ReplyDeleteFor several days, I was wondering why I never see blog updates for your blog. Now I know why! I never put this under my follow blogs - I thought I did! Well, I'm here now and of course, I see you on Twitter!
ReplyDeleteAs for my childhood tree, it was a mix of ornaments from my dads mom and my mom's grandma. It had a lot of fun interesting glass ornaments, each one different and beautiful.
Monica
Hey there Krissy! Long time no see...my bad--been a little busy.
ReplyDeleteI remember my xmas tree being put up on Christmas Eve by Santa (that's how I found out about Santa--I walked in on Mom decorating the tree)...it was a fake tree, but it was so covered in tinsel that you couldn't really see anything else. That was my mom's friend (future stepmom) for ya.
Now my tree is a prelit tree--lots of ornaments...mostly the ones the kids made in school. It looks cute!
Annie =)
411mom.blogspot.com
OMG! I thought I was the only one who had an aluminum tree with a color wheel as a kid. LOL! Ah, the sixties.
ReplyDeleteWell, I'll be the sore thumb to stick out and say that we didn't have a Christmas tree when I was a child. We didn't celebrate Christmas (or most holidays) for religious reasons.
ReplyDeleteHowever, once I became a teen, I broke away from what I consider cult-like notions. As an adult, I'm a Christian and celebrate Christmas with passion.
Our son experienced his first Christmas this year so it was a very special one indeed! He helped hang (shatterproof) ornaments on the tree and was very thrilled to switch on the lights.
I am Jewish actually. But when I was a kid there were two families with whom we were close that celebrated Christmas together. One was another Jewish family with 4 kids, and the third were Selly (Jewish) who was married to Bob (Italian). Although Bob and Selly only had a grown son, who lived far away, we kids were also very close to Bob and Selly. And every year, they had a Christmas decorating tree party at their house for all of us. We all sat around a big table creating our own Christmas decorations out of paper, pipe cleaners, felt, sparkles, etc., etc. etc. Those decorating parties are among my best childhood holiday memories.
ReplyDelete