My christmas tree MUST have blinking lights. In a multitude of colors. Bring on Vegas, baby.
Well, I have yet to encounter this problem, since this would have been my first Christmas sharing a tree, if Mr. Sethra hadn’t gotten deployed…
So, mild thread hijack instead. 
Anybody want to share cute stories about their first Christmases with their spouses/significant others? Or just cute stories about things they’ve done for someone to brighten their holidays?I’ll start.
The tree I’m using was my Christmas gift to my love last year. We weren’t a couple at the time; in fact I was dating someone else rather seriously. But… we were best friends, and had been for three years. This was the first year he was unable to go home on leave for Christmas or have his family come to him. He was depressed because it was also the first Christmas since he got rather badly dumped by a former girlfriend.
So I felt really bad for him, and wanted to find something to make his holidays a little less bleak.
Somehow I hit on the idea of getting him a small fake tree and the trimmings; I knew he didn’t have any of his own.
The tree was small and cheap; Walgreen’s was having a great sale. Half the ornaments were from my own collection; back when I started putting up my own tree I had bought several boxes of glass ornaments to make it look less bare. As the years passed I collected more unique ones and started putting up fewer of the globes. So I had plenty to spare. I also bought him several new ones, and a really nice light-up star. No string of lights; I was already spending more on him than just about anyone else, when shipping was added in, and figured he could get a string or two of lights easily enough even though he was fairly broke.
He was thrilled. Called me the day it arrived and told me that now his tiny room really looked and felt like Christmas.
The memory of that phone call still makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.
This year I’m using the same tree and ornaments, with the addition of a string of lights - evidently the poor man was so broke last December he couldn’t buy one. Unfortunately I couldn’t augment it with my own collection of decorations; most of those are in storage back at my parents’ home. The trip we anticipated making to retrieve my left-behind stuff never materialized, in part because of the deployment. ::sigh:: My mother is going to try shipping me some of them, but since she hasn’t sent any yet… I have a feeling I won’t get them in time for the holidays.
Oh well.
Just looking at that tree reminds me of so many good memories. Hopefully next year we’ll be able to buy a real tree and decorate it together.
End thread mini-hijack.
We have lights shaped like chili peppers on our tree.
They do not blink.
Yeah, the blinking musical lights are way beyond tacky, but I like the bubbler lights. They’re cool.
The first year I was away from home for Christmas Iwas really broke, and working at the Guthrie Theatre. Mom sent me 50$ to get a tree, but my roommate and I used it to pay some bills. We did manage to buy one 6$ tree that Charlie Brown would have turned up his nose at, but we had no money at all for ornaments. We dug into our stuff to find anything glittery or remotely Christmasy. to decorate the thing with. We had both been technical theatre majors, her in stage management and me in design, so we did have some stuff maybe not available to everyone. We took some pine cones from the park across the street and spray painted them gold. We strung them on the tree with some yarn for a knitting project I had going. We broke apart a gel book. ( These are strips of a colored plastic sort of like the stuff they wrap fruit baskets in grocery stores in. They are about 1" by 3" and there are hundred or so in all different colors. They are samples of what you can buy to change the color of lights.) We hung these on the tree. Then running out of room on the tree, strung them on more of the yarn and ran them across the living room ceiling. I forget what all else we did, but it did come out looking festive if not exactly Christmaslike.
Here is another vote for putting everything on the tree. Our tree topper now is a barbie I made a angel costume for. We do have to choose a tree with a thick top to it or it sort of bends. There is the felt tin soldier that belonged to my brother who died. There is the pheasant that we pretend is a partridge and assorted antique balls and stuff my daughter made. No blinking or colored lights here though and no tinsel.
I’m with podkayne – it’s your family Christmas tree and should reflect your family – both of you, tacky or not. So, compromise. Since he doesn’t like blinking lights, you give in on that and use solid ones. However, he has to give in on the one-strand thing and let you use enough to cover the whole tree. Use all of the ornaments – his plastic ones and your glass ones – side by side, just like the two of you. As for the tree-topper / tree-skirt thing – let him use his foil star, but you get to cover the tree stand with the tree skirt of your choice. Voila! A christmas tree that reflects you both! And, Merry Christmas!
We do the mix and match thing. I have the glass ornaments my wife has the specialty ornaments.
I would put my foot down on the blinking lights though.
No.
Way.
I’m shocked to my gills that so many people are against blinking Christmas tree lights! It’s not Christmas without twinkling lights!
(Runs to go put her face in a pillow and cry because of all the Scroogy, non-blinky people)
I concur: Blinking lights are hideous. IMHO. But they make them, so there must be a market . . . ug.
This is my first Xmas (well, Solstice) that my fiance and I will have at our own place. Last two years have been at my dad’s. It won’t be our first alone, since we have a roomie (Damn, I can’t wait till we can spend a Solstice alone!), but it is our first with our own tree.
What do I do, being the hippy that I might as well be?
I buy a live, potted tree. I got a small one (about 2’), so it’d have room to grow.
Being someone who has to have things color-coordinated (HAVE to), I have a strand of 50 blue lights, and matte blue and silver glass balls held on with twisty ties (the balls didn’t come with hooks, and I didn’t feel like going to the store).
But I like the idea of having the same living tree every year. So in 10 or 20 years, I can look at it and remember when we got it, and all the Solstices it’s gone through with us. And one day, it’ll be a big beautiful tree that I don’t need to worry about all the dried, dead pine needles poking me in the feet, or throwing it away.
Blinking lights go outside only. Only. But they’re fun outside.
We managed to reach a semi-compromise on the lights- we got a (yes, only ONE) string of lights with a control on them, so when he’s home they can just be still and boring and when he’s not home, I can make them blink. There are several setting, I can make them blink fast, slow, by color- we need another 2 or 3 strings of these lights!
And I'm also amazed at the number of non-blinkers here. I wonder if that's one of the questions they ask on "eHarmony"?katie1341,
Ah, you might be talking about what I wanted to mention. I’d recommend against getting multiple strings, as it will look terrible when they’re out of sync.
While I’m not a big fan of full string rapidly blinking lights (which we didn’t have anyway, due to my brother’s epilepsy), one year we had a string that had four colors (Red, Green, Blue, and Yellow) and a little controller. It could do about five settings (Chasing, dancing, fading, blinking, and constant). Fading was by far the coolest, it would be all the red lights, then they’d dim out and all the blue one would come on, then they’d fade out and all the green ones would come on, etc. Not as annoying as BLINK-BLINK-BLINK, but it was just so cool.
Anyway, we had that string fading and a string of always on white lights, and that was it. We had a number of motorized/electrical ornaments that got plugged in to the white string, a couple of homemade ones, and the rest were plain the plain varicolored mirrored glass balls. I always thought it looked pretty nice. Oh, we did have this kinda creepy, rather expensive light up angel thing as a tree topper… but the last year (actually two years ago, now that I think about it) I made an C80-type model out of gold wrapping paper (three cheers for modular origami, geometry, and organic chemistry) and my dad stuck that on instead.
[FOCUS]: I think you could probably sell the fading lights to the husband… small end of the wedge, and all that.
Oh, Sethra-Chan, that’s a lovely story. Obviously the tree meant a lot to him! I hope you’re together sooner rather than later. The first year I was married to my husband, we were apart for Christmas. This is about the first year we have a decent sized tree, actually. We’re still collecting ornaments.
Just put on everything that each of you wants. A tree should reflect all the people who decorate it. Put on his blinking lights, plus your own extra strand or two of non-blinking lights, plus your tasteful ornaments, plus his tacky ones, plus anything else that either of you likes. The only real area for conflict on a tree is on the topper- the rest of it, you just throw on everything anyone wants, until you run out of branches, and then you buy a bigger tree.
katie, honey, if you want blinking lights, you go for it! Even if others may think blinking lights are ugly, they would surely never be so tacky as to say that to you after seeing your tree. (Dopers don’t count; I’m talking about people that you’ve invited into your home.)
Gotta say, I agree with those who say Christmas trees should be a mish-mash. My mom is into stylish, color-coordinated trees, but they never feel cozy and warm to me in the same way that crazy, a-little-bit-of-everything trees do.
Hm…
I don’t think this marriage can be saved. On the other hand, if you get a divorce, who’s going to get the tree?
“The binky lights are mine; so are the tacky plastic ornaments.”
“OK. Mine are the tasteful glass ornaments and the single string of non-blinky lights. I think the tree-topper is yours.”
“Yes it is. It’s a family heirloom. So is the K-mart tree skirt.”
“Fine. But the tree itself is MINE.”
“Over my DEAD BODY.”
“That’s fine, too. But I get the tree.”
“Never, never never.”
“OK, I’ll let you have the tree, but I get ALL the garden flamingos.”
“Argh.”
- PW
You want tacky lights? My parents’ lights are, I’m pretty sure, from the 50’s. Weird electrical cords, and the big bulbs that you usually only see outdoors these days. And some bubble lights, too, of course. They still have the original reflectors–plastic stars and foil-covered cardboard–around some of them. (For those too young to know, reflectors are sort of shiny collars for each bulb.)
A happy Christmas memory: when DangerDad and I were living in the CA Bay Area, we found that the trees available all cost at least $60. So I took a bunch of sheets of green construction paper, taped them all together and cut out a tree shape, and stuck it on the wall. Lights and ornaments were put up with thumbtacks. It was great.
Heeeyyyyyy, I like those lights!! Those are my favorites (and I’m only 26).
We have Blinking Chili Pepper Lights!
They are strung up year round in our kitchen.
We don’t have a tree, just a soft toy nativity scene.
Baby just learning to crawl + 2 psycho kitties = death to christmas tree.
What, may I ask, is so tacky about the big old 1950s style lights? They’re much more festive than the new, tiny kind.
Signed, Q.N. Jones and Family
Proudly using the same string of Christmas tree lights since 1967.