Holiday

[RetRN]

Vintage. I remember multi-colored lights, silver icicles, displaying Christmas cards, and decorating sugar cookies and gingerbread men. My brother and I were only 13 months apart and each got 3 gifts. When little sister came along 7 years later, it seems she got more. On Christmas Eve at church we all recieved a bag fillted with candy, nuts, and fruit. Wonderful memories.

[RedHeadedWench]

We had alarge tree..our family room ceiling was over 10 feet. Mostly glass ornaments, and they were older from my grandmother...some newer ones (for that time) like the posable elves and glitter houses. We used to also make ornaments with sequins and pins. Remember those? LOL

My mom always decorated the mantle. I made her a set of ceramic choir boys in my ceramics class. Stockings, of course.

She also used to put a plastic candle ring on the coffee table with a candle every year.

[SHOPR]

1970s.  I don't remember much about the big picture, but I remember lots of small details.  Money was tight and I don't think much money was ever spent, by anyone in our family or by any of our friends, on decorations.  I think anything we had came from the dollar or dime stores of the time.  We used the same few decorations year after year.  I still have some of them.

I remember plastic sit-around decorations.  Examples:

I still have (and love) three spotted deer like the ones below, but they are in very sad shape, have become brittle, and are breaking. 

I remember the glass cylinder candles with decals.  Everyone had them.  I still have some from way back when, but I don't use them:

I also remember that we would either get a live Scotch Pine, which would stick me like crazy, or we would put up, limb by limb, a very modest artificial tree.  We would use multicolor strands of mini lights, which 'til this day I love to look at come Christmas. 

I remember everyone I knew having these balls on their trees:

I also remember that my mother would carefully place the tinsel, the really long strands, one by one. 

Looking back, those were tacky times, but they are happy memories, and that is what matters. 

[SHOPR]

@RedHeadedWench, I remember the ornaments made from sequins and pins on a styrofoam base.  I think we must've made them during a church craft activity, because we all made one with a small photo of ourselves in the center.  We still have them. 

[pupwhipped]

Some of you may cringe, but we had one of those silver tinsel branch trees...and I ADORED it! It was the kind that you used the color wheel on. The best thing about our tree was that it rotated around. I would pick out an ornament and then wait for the tree to slowly spin and try to spy that ornament when it came back around. I was so proud of myself if it didn't get by me. So much FUN!!!

Our tree was similar to this one but we decorated with all kinds of different things on it, not just all these matched balls:

Those were the days, my friends!

[Kitlynn]

We had a live tree that went up on the fifteenth of December. Large multi colored lights along with hand made ornaments and some store bought ones that were used every year. Lots of silver tinsel put on the tree one strand at a time. My Dad used snow in a can and stencils and put decorations on the picture window in the living room. He always made a yule log. Sometimes out of wood and sometimes out of a can and plaster of paris. It always had three candles with ribbon looped around the bottom of them. One string of outdoor lights acroos the front of the roof line. A large candle in the middle of a small wreath on the coffee table. Red table cloth with gold poinsettas on it was put on the kitchen table. Candy dish with hard ribbon christmas candy sat in the middle of the table. Then we were ready to celebrate. It only took a few hours to put it all together. 

[MalteseMomma]

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@pupwhipped wrote:

Some of you may cringe, but we had one of those silver tinsel branch trees...and I ADORED it! It was the kind that you used the color wheel on. The best thing about our tree was that it rotated around. I would pick out an ornament and then wait for the tree to slowly spin and try to spy that ornament when it came back around. I was so proud of myself if it didn't get by me. So much FUN!!!

Our tree was similar to this one but we decorated with all kinds of different things on it, not just all these matched balls:

Those were the days, my friends!

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I remember them .I had one for a few years in my married life. I can remember my mom and dad ,when they got older and didn't want to put up a tree anymore.I dragged out my silver one and set it up in their apt. upstairs in my house.....lol  My poor parents.I do not remember if I helped them take it down or not. If my kids did that to me......I'd bam them over the head with whatever strength I had left at 78 yrs old.........lol

[Buck-i-Nana]

@pupwhipped - My grandmother had one of those.  I remember being mesmerized by the color wheel!

[Buck-i-Nana]

@Kitlynn - I completely forgot about the outside lights!  Dad ran all blue lights along the roof line.  Later on, he added white lights to the blue spruce tree at the corner of the house.

[Winter Holiday]

I grew up in the 1980's. My mom decorated the tree with multi color lights and then at one point somewhere after I was about the age of five started decorating using white lights. The ornaments on the tree were from my mom's past. Flocked ornaments and sugar coated ornaments. There were some wooden ornaments too. My mom used tinsel on the tree and never had one glass ornament on the tree unlike myself. I think her lack of glass ornaments had to do with when she was a toddler and took a bite of a glass ornament. Anyway the tree to me was beautiful and simple maybe especially because it was sentimental.

Most everything else was simple too. My mom had nativity figures from the 1960's that were made in Italy. My mom didn't have a creche so as a tradition every year she would make one using a wooden fruit crate from the produce section of the store. It would turn out very nice. My mom also had an extremely large sugared fruit wreath and a smaller light up flocked wreath. There was a village on top of the china hutch with different non-matching buildings and many made out of styrofoam. The Ray Conniff Singers and Ramsey Lewis would play in the background.

My mom didn't decorate every square inch of the house like I do and she never put lights around the windows. My mom would decorate for Christmas when she got around to it usually the second week of December. I have everything decorated by the second week of November.

Nothing my mom decorated with was super flashy. Most of her decor was from discount stores or resale stores. For my mom Christmas was about the family and togetherness. One of my favorite memories was being given the job of being the light strand tester back when that stuff really still needed to get done. I miss that. At my age I am still really excited about Christmas and can buy stuff regarding it and think about it year round. However there is nothing like remembering being that girl bursting and the excitement of seeing that box of decor waiting to be opened or Santa coming with gifts. I miss those Christmases where the world my world at least wasn't so complex and certain relatives were still on this plain.