Christmas Decorations

[flirt5721]

When do you put your Christmas tree and decorations up?
What is you color theme?

In my family we always put up our tree on Thanksgiving night and the rest of the decoration during the weekend. This year my color theme will be purple, silver, and black.

[Tulip86]

We put the tree up somewhere after the 6th.

My color theme will be purple and gold.

[Mevara]

We put it up the day after Thanksgiving. Since my husband is Jewish our color scheme is white and blue.

[Leslie Anne]

We usually put up the tree around the 10th of December and decorate it over the next few days. Our theme is Christmas Tree. Do people usually have a color theme?

[thetaj]

We have a red felt tree skirt, white lights and sometimes put red felt bows on it along with candy canes and all of our ornaments, so it's kind of red themed.

[OneHeartOneWay]

Originally Posted by Leslie Anne

We usually put up the tree around the 10th of December and decorate it over the next few days. Our theme is Christmas Tree. Do people usually have a color theme?

I never knew of any theme other than "Christmas Tree" until I met my (now) husband's family. He's from eastern Kentucky, where everything is very "traditional" style; quilts, rustic colors like maroons and forrest greens, LOTS of bows-handmade from 2 inch wide fabric ribbon, etc. EVERYONE- individual families, the bank, the stores downtown- has a color theme. Usually it involves red and either white, silver, or gold, and then some other color as an accent. But, I have to say, everything always looks beautiful and so tasteful. Just very different from the "Christmas tree" theme I'm used to where every mismatch of handmade and store bought ornament from the past twenty years all collide on one tree.

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by Leslie Anne

Our theme is Christmas Tree. Do people usually have a color theme?

Some do.

Your "theme" Christmas tree?

We don't do color themes, unless one counts the red and green that tend to predominate at Christmas, coupled with purple and rose candles on the Advent wreath, as a "theme." (We don't think of it that way.) The lights on the tree are multi-colored (including white) small lights. There's no color consisteny at all with what goes on the tree.

As I said in the thread to which I linked, my parents started the tradition with us of buying an ornament whenever we went on vacation somewhere. When I was grown up, I had a "starter set" of the ornaments I had gotten on trips. My wife and I started the same tradition on our honeymoon. Now when we go on vacation or even shorter trips, my wife and I pick out at least one ornament and our kids pick out at least one apiece.

I'd say that at least 75% of our ornaments are either from trips or there's some other sentimental/historical connection. (The rest are ornaments the kids made, friends gave us, or the like -- we have no glass balls or anything similar.) It makes decorating the tree turn into a time to remember fun places we've been and things we've done over the years.

We typically put up our tree in mid-December, and it will stay up until January 6 (at least).

[ForeverRoses]

We don't have a theme other than "Christmas". Most of my decorations are from family and friends in Germany, so I guess you could go with a German Christmas theme if there is such a thing.

My favorite things are a Christmas village from our old neighbor Mr. Walters (who died 30 years ago). My parents gave it to me several years ago. It's seen better days, but all the houses are paper mache and the people are all hand-carved wood. It was one of the things he brought with him when he moved to to US from Germany back in the 1950s.

I also love my Christmas Pyramid that my godmother sent me as a wedding gift. You use candles to make the pyramid spin around.

Oh, and I love my silver Advent wreath from one of my Tantes. It sits on the coffee table with the purple and rose candles. On Christmas eve the boys exchange the purple and rose candles with red and we light a white Christ candle in the middle that my son made in Sunday school several years ago.

We usually cut down our own tree, so we will be getting it this Sunday (I think that is too early, but if we wait too long, the selection sucks), but it will stay up until the Epiphany.

[victoriana]

I put up my tree the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend. It's themed after a Tiffany & Co. jewelry box, so it's turquoise, silver, and white. Lots of bow and box-shaped ornaments, with of course more traditional shapes too. It came out so cute!

[RaggedyAnn]

We pick a different theme/color scheme every year from what we have collected. Some years we put out my RaggedyAnn and Andy ornament collection. Last year we did ribbon cascading down from the top with pointsetta and sprigs of berries and paper wrapped ornaments.

This year we will probably hang a few of the Thomas the Train toys we got as hand-me-downs, since it is Andy Jr.'s first Christmas. I have to make sure they're not too heavy though. I imagine we'll used colored lights this year, but we have both. We're getting new stockings this year. I can't wait for them to come in! We'll definitely put out our train along the bottom too.

[clarinette]

We have two Christmas trees. One is decorated by my sister and me, and it has a bunch of ornaments that people have given to us over the years. The other is my mom's, and she has a bunch of nice ornaments (blown glass, etc.).

We usually put everything up the weekend after Thanksgiving, because we hate Black Friday crowds.

[Gusteau]

My mother is very, well the nice way to say it would be particular. Consequently we have a pretty strictly followed theme. It's all red and gold, and kind of rustic/handcrafted. The house has lots of garland, berries, felt snowmen, candles in the windows, stuff like that. The tree is all red and gold balls with crocheted white snowflakes and crystal icicles.

[christiangirl]

I usually wait till the week before to get the tree. This is a tradition carried over from childhood. The theme was always "last minute possible." I always have to have multi-colored lights and as many mismatched ornaments as possible. It looks more homey to me that way. I guess the years' worth of kid-made ornaments made having a matching, color-themed tree impossible so now I'm not fond of organized trees. My star changes colors every few seconds.

[DubaiSis]

Growing up, the tree went up on the day after Thanksgiving and came down on January 1st. (yes, fake or flocked trees so they would last that long). We virtually always had the mishmash of homemade ornaments, cheapies bought when that's all my parents could afford and then a few fancy ones that would have been gifts. Does anyone really need sterling silver or crystal Christmas ornaments? If nothing else, they're always too heavy and droop.

I haven't put up a tree of any kind in several years, but I did see a cool tree shaped metal frame at Crate & Barrel from which you could hang 6 or 8 ornaments. If I wasn't worried about us moving AGAIN, I'd have bought that and a couple interesting ornaments. They also did an AMAZING display, hanging charcoal grill grates from the ceiling (perfectly clean and shiny of course) with ornaments hanging at varying lengths.

It seems to me the trend lately is to have 2 or more trees in your house, one being the old-fashioned mix of personal ornaments and one or more being a theme ranging from beautiful to freakishly pretentious.

[MysticCat]

Originally Posted by DubaiSis

It seems to me the trend lately is to have 2 or more trees in your house, one being the old-fashioned mix of personal ornaments and one or more being a theme ranging from beautiful to freakishly pretentious.

There's a house near us that seems to have a tree in every room. I'm not making that up -- I counted 8 trees last year that I could see from the street. Add to that garlands and lights everywhere. Nothing goes undecorated.

I don't get it.