Christmas Tree

I love a Christmas tree with the old fashion bubble lights from my childhood.

We always had red lights, gold balls, and tinsel on our tree when I was a kid, and my siblings and I always wanted the plastic Santa with red flocking on the top of the tree. Mom never liked that kitchy topper, so as soon as we were old enough, Santa somehow disappeared and Mom began to decorate the way she wanted.

As well as my own, I've got most of the original tree decorations my parents used - between 1920 and 1993 - and they still look good !!

Most of the items my ex and I put on our tree were whatever we purchased ourselves, some given to us and those purchased by my mother-in-law who sold Avon for 47 years. Many years with beautiful tree. Left it all with my ex. Those from my family were to other siblings. Lots of memories. Not ready to start any new traditions.

That's lovely, Mad.

I'm a definite hoarder for some things, Marian

[I've still got a Monopoly game from just after it first became available in the UK. It really belongs to my older Brother but I snagged it when he lost interest and have had it ever since !! ]

My trees over the years have gotten smaller, but I still have some ornaments that have good memories. This year I bought a small artifical tree being hugged by a sweet polar bear in a red scarf. It's pre-decorated with lights, pine cones, berries, a cardinal, and a star at the top. As soon as my kitchen renovation is done, and I can clear off surfaces covered with kitchen paraphernalia, I'll dig out my Christmas stuff and get to decorating.

I have two former Christmas trees in my yard. Out front by my steps is a very plump but not tall Alberta spruce, and in the side yard within view of where I'm sitting right now is my former 2-foot tall spruce which is now much taller than the house. If I had a bigger yard, I'd get more real trees to plant, but there's just no more room.

Always had an artificial tree growing up. My ex and his family were into the real thing. Early in our marriage, working on trees was a 2 day ordeal. We'd go out for dinner, then stop by the local ($20) tree lot and buy one for his mom and one for us. We'd take them to his mom's house where he'd trim and prepare the truck and put the tree into a pail of water; repeat same at our house. Few days later, go to his mom's house, get the tree into her living room (up 2 flights of stairs), decorate it for her then go out to dinner. Next day we'd do up our own tree.

That tradition continued for about 20 years until we started having health issues with our feet, and mom had to be place into an assisted living facility. A family friend had given us a beautifully painted ceramic tree. For several years, lack of time and energy meant trimming our home festivities to simply setting up the ceramic tree. After a couple years doing that, we resorted to purchasing a boxed, reusable tree. Still looked nice and eliminated the need for watering and cleaning up dead needles.

Unfortunately, Christmas joy was lessened by the loss of two of his brothers and loss of our marriage, each of which happened the same day in Dec within a span of 5 years.

I remember those bubble lights as a kid ... they are so cool ... we used to have them for years on our tree but then it seems they stopped making them for a time ... but see they are back/have been back