I have been thinking about this for the last few days because (a) I am shopping for functional candleholders on eBay, and lots of the candleholders sold there are all Xmas-blinged up, and 2] I have a toddler and I’m pretty much always abstractly wondering how he sees things.
What Christmas cruft do you remember fondly? Would you still like any of it? Handmade, store-bought, Gurley caroler candles, felt & fake fur stockings with your name in yarn, glitter glued on clothespins, fine Polish figural glass ornaments, bubble lights, pink aluminum trees, real popcorn and cranberry garlands, corn-husk angels crafted by an aunt, municipal lighting displays, a porcelain nativity set, what? If you didn’t have Christmas crap in your own house, did you see anything that other people had that you envied?
My parents had some very fragile cobalt blue mercury-glass ball ornaments that I especially loved, and a construction-paper … thing I made when I was three that always hung on the lowest branch of the tree. But I always thought our (yes, felt and fake fur) stockings were kind of ugly, even if they were pleasantly large. I never liked anything that was red, green, and white all together – I did not appreciate the color combination at all. I remember seeing an all-purple-and-old-gold decorated room in the early 80s that I thought was just *so *very chic, and decided to have nice Christmas stuff like *that *someday. :rolleyes:
The angel on our tree-top star had bright red hair, which I thought was perfect, since I thought red hair was the prettiest kind. Since then I’ve been dismayed to not only not find any red-haired angels of my own, but also to find all po-faced blonde angels. Angels are supposed to be fierce! They’re scary! Majestic! People tremble when they appear! And multi-ethnic, if you please! Or at least not always Scandinavian.
We had some interesting ornaments on the tree growing up. Mom says she rescued many of them from a store dumpster. I still have many of them, but my favorites are two rabbits. They have rhinestone noses and are wearing little lame’ jackets and hats. One is silver and one is gold. I don’t know what they have to do with Christmas (or anything else) but I dig them.
When I was little my mom was very crafty, but we didn’t have a lot of money. One year we glued bits of tissue paper to Styrofoam balls. They came out looking very cool. I still have several of them. Fortunately my mom was good about dating everything. We made them in 1971.
We had a nativity scene that I used to love to look at. It was made of particle board with some straw glued to it, and had ceramic figurines. Of particular note were the sheep painted black (not part of the original set), and the camel whose neck broke and was glued back on. Mostly what I remember is how it all smelled.
The tree topper is a cardboard star covered in gold glitter. My brother made it when he was a kid.
I also remember the real popcorn garlands fondly. Do people still do those? My parents tried to recycle them once, and while the popcorn was remarkably well-preserved, some of the popped kernels would fall off, and the garland ended up looking like a half-eaten disaster. The good news: we got to make another one! I also loved the angel on the top of the tree, because my dad would left me up to place it there. Aww… memories.
We had… I don’t even know what it’s called, but it was a bunch of tiny angels and horizontal tin windmills and there were probably 6 or 7 candles that you’d light and the heat from the candles rose to the windmills and spun them around to create a moving, heavenly ‘diorama’ of sorts. I was very young and, like many kids, fascinated by fire.
Things I pull from the Christmas Trunk* include numerous handmade paper ornaments from my brother and myself and now my son, little red and green houses, a yarn doll that sits on a branch, little hazelnut mice tucked into walnut shell beds (very popular craft one year, would be fun to make more!)
Mom only had a paper nativity, long gone now. The angel needs some touching up, maybe I should do that this year. Her glitter is lost and the cotton ‘cloud’ as her hem is long torn away.
I wouldn’t want a fancy decorative Christmas tree/set up. I prefer the little tree with family treasures we’ve made/collected over the years.
*It’s a big trunk, it used to sit on a wheeled board but the wheels broke and I haven’t made a new board up.
When we were kids, we never lived anywhere with a fireplace. So my mom had this old ‘fake’ fireplace made of corrugated cardboard. Every year we’d put it up and hang our stockings from it so Santa had a way to get into the house. It looked ridiculous now that I think about it but back then it was the most amazing thing ever. Oh and of course, the chirping bird ornament XD Just a round plastic ball that made chirping sounds when plugged in. You can’t imagine my joy at finding one of those at a party store last year!
My mother still has (or I have carted off) a lot of the stuff I remember fondly, and I still love it all. If our parents died tomorrow, I would fight my brother tooth and nail for a lot of that stuff. The ceramic Christmas tree with the little bulbs that light up, the Santa and Mrs. Claus salt and pepper shakers, the little stuffed ornaments she made for us when I was a baby (mine is a mouse in a stocking). And, of course, our stockings Mom hand-sewed and embroidered when I was in kindergarten. They got mislaid for a year or so a while back and I was devastated at the loss of my stocking.
Aluminum Christmas tree and color wheel. Grandmother turned that color wheel on every night from 7 till 10. She alternated ornaments. One Christmas all red. Next year all Blue etc.
I still set up the family aluminum tree and color wheel that I stole from mom’s attic. I do the red thing. I love it.
When my niece was about 4years old she took a peanut, painted it white, tied a little piece of red yarn around it, to look like a scarf, and painted little black dots to be “coal”. It’s a snowman! That is my favorite ornament.
I’ve never liked Christmas much, and I don’t celebrate at all now (except my SO insists that we go out to dinner).
But when I was growing up, the only part of the holiday time that I really liked (besides all the extra sweets and other food) was decorating the tree.
Maybe because it was a family time without stress or anyone upset, and because we worked together to produce a very nice result. My father would start by stringing the lights because, well, that’s man stuff. Then everyone would string the garland, then the ornaments, then the stuff that we called “rain” (well, I grew up in Oregon, after all) but which I think is what most people mean by tinsel - individual strands of metal (aluminum?) that you had to carefully separate out or they would break, and hang one by one on all the branches. Our trees were old fashioned and beautiful.
Some of the ornaments seemed to me to be really old, I always thought that my mother had brought them from her family at some point. These tended to be smaller and less flashy, but they had charm that was lacking in the more modern ones. They’re all long gone now, but I remember some of those fondly.
My second favorite activity was taking down the tree, which we did on the weekend after New Years, and carefully stowing everything away for next year. Another family activity, and one that meant that Christmas was finally over.
Roddy
Oh, we had that one, too! I’ve seen little tinny ones and big elaborate ones, with big candles of course.
My grandma had all us kids over for an ornament-making party many years ago, I think it was an artsy-craftsy fad going around in ladies magazines. Styrofoam balls, glue, straight pins, ribbon, glitter, and a jaw-dropping assortment of beads of all colors, shapes, and sizes. I remember some awesome creations that, unfortunately, have long since disappeared, I wish I had at least one. I think all those beads would make it a bit expensive to make ornaments now, unless they were bought in bulk.
My husband “inherited” a box of ugly shiny colored glass balls with the fishhook hangars that were long out of fashion. I didn’t want to put them on my pretty tree, so for a couple of years painstakingly hung them on a bead garland strung over the top of a doorway. Then they just sort of…disappeared. Unmissed, too.
I remember the Chistmas crib. We used to make the stable out of bark from stringybarks that grew in our garden.
We still have ours. As the angels spin, bells are struck so that you get a constant chime. It gets a run every year, and still fascinates the children.
It also has an alternative set of pieces - a clown on the top and circus horses underneath, for children’s birthday parties.
We had the angel/candle/windmill thing too. I guess my mom still has it, but I don’t think she has displayed it lately… maybe I’ll look for it this year. My favorite decorations were at my grandparents’ house,though: a set of 8 little porcelain bells shaped like angels, and Granddaddy’s train set around the base of the tree. The smell of the smoke stuff (some kind of liquid that went in the smokestack) evokes such good memories of crawling around on the floor setting up the tracks, and Granddaddy would explain what all of the pieces were. (He retired from the railroad, and loved trains.) I think Grandmother probably got rid of the train some years ago, but I hope maybe one of the aunts or cousins salvaged it. There were 8 of the angel bells, so each grandchild got one, but somehow I have 3 of them and the original box in my steamer trunk. I think the extras are my siblings’, since both were probably overseas during the distribution.
There was an ornament that was “mine”. It had a little metal fan inside of a clear plastic casing. When sunlight or a very hot tree light hit it, the heat would make the fan spin. My mother has that one, right now.
Also, bubble lights. Dear god I miss bubble lights.
You can still get bubble lights! My mom has a dozen of those things, bought all in the past ten years, or so.
My personal favourite was Gramma’s Amazing Frilly Tree. It was made out of some ungodly material, and it was like…like a fake tree, except metallic, and white, and only about three feet high. It was “garnished” with blue sparkly bits, and silver sparkly bits. It used to rotate on a spinning base, but that broke (which was for the best, because it could blind you if it was spinning and caught the light the wrong way), and then it just sat there. I think it was about 9,000 years old, and eventually broke apart entirely one year (probably helped by the fact of it being 9,000 years old) and it sadly had to be retired a couple years before she moved in with us, on account of Alzheimer’s.
My other grandmother embraced America with open arms when she moved, and accumulated quite the collection of bizarre crap, especially Christmas crap. My LEAST favourite were these awful animatronic moving Christmas dolls. They were about two feet tall and dressed like little Victorian children carolers, and they MOVED, and their mouths yawed open like they were “singing” (or screaming in pain, maybe) and their little doll limbs waved candles and song books back and forth. God, I hated those things, but Babcia loved them, thought they were wildly attractive, and wouldn’t hear of trashing them. After she died, our family made no noise about wanting them. They went to another aunt, and good riddance, as far as I’m concerned.