And every year I still play “The Partridge Family Christmas Album”.
We wrapped our bedroom doors in wrapping paper. The best looking years were when we also included big ribbons and bows.
I was raised Jewish (Reform) in an overwhelmingly Christian neighborhood. Our parents didn’t want us to feel left out, so we had Hanukkah presents and a menorah . . . and a Christmas tree. The tree got smaller every year, until I was about 10, when it was about 2 feet high, on a book case. I remember the lights we used (the old ones that got extremely hot) and the decorations. The trees were our only nod to Christmas, and I remember them fondly.
Now here’s something strange: My brother, who is 3 years older, has no recollection of ever having a tree. He swears I’m imagining the whole thing. But I know we had them; I remember many details, like the year we made gingerbread men and hung them on the tree. During the night the dog ate all the ones in the lower half of the tree. There’s no way I imagined that.
When we were young on a day that was not nice enough to go out, Mom would put some colored dye in glass wax and we would get out Christmas stencils and decorate the windows. I loved that.
We had some decorations with pinwheels inside that turned when you placed them over a warm Christmas bulb. I loved those. We lost them during a flood, but not too long ago some dopers helped me find replacements on eBay. They don’t turn much with the new safe lights, but I still love them.
My grandma, and just about every grandma I knew, had a … 24 inch? … ceramic (this WAS the 70s) Christmas tree with plastic “bulbs” that had a rod on the bottom that fitted into the ceramic tree. You had an electric cord with a bulb on it that you put inside the tree, and the light would shine up the rod and then the bulbs would look lit up on the outside of the tree. I loved that thing. Unfortunately, over the years, bulbs had been lost or broken, so there were many holes through which you could look inside the tree…
A couple of years ago I found a stall in a market that had little bags of the plastic bulbs for sale. And this was in August, not a Christmas market in any way. Something like two dollars for ten of them. She also had bags of smaller bulbs. I had no idea there were smaller trees that worked the same way…
My dad is hyper-organized, so my sibs and all had separate boxes for our ornaments, and each one had our initals in teeny tiny letters, added by him or mom before they even fell into our hands. The boxes are still intact at my mom’s place.
I loved our tree topper, which is a gorgeous blue stained glass star, made by my mom I think slightly before I was born. It’s like the first picture at this link, but with five points and clear cobalt glass. Also our stockings, all sewn by her out of nice soft red corduroy and white fake fur, with our names embroidered down the side. Once she made the stockings, star and a few other things, it seems like she was satisfied, because after I was 4 or so nothing new showed up. She did keep knitting, and sewing Halloween costumes, and coming up with great and useful DIY camping gear, but no more Christmas doo-dads. I’ll have to ask her about that sometime.
My family’s traditional squabble was over this heavy Garfield ornament. We’ve had it for as long as I can remember and, owing to the weight, it has to be hung on a sturdy top branch. Hanging an ornament on a top branch means, of course, that you have to be tall enough to hang it without falling, so it was a cherished privilege to finally be old enough to hang the Garfield from the top.
The one Christmas decoration I really, really want, though, is a quilted tree skirt my grandmother made for my mother. It’s got all these diamond-shaped panels of different Christmas-patterned material, but mostly it’s just a lovely red and gold with bits of green. At this point, I think Mom might’ve locked it away somewhere, brought out only for supervised visits, since I keep mentioning how much I really wish I had it for myself. I keep thinking maybe I should just buy a similar one (it’s not the same, of course, but Grandma can’t quilt any more and she’s not giving up the tree skirt she made for herself any time soon either), but they tend to go for a couple hundred dollars easy. I’ll just have to keep plotting my Christmas decoration heist.
One year, when I was in preschool and before my brother was born, my mom and I made some Christmas ornaments. We took walnut shell halves, and glued a filbert inside the pointy end. We then took a small square of cloth, maybe 2" to a side, and stuffed cotton balls inside. We then glued these into the remaining spaces. We cut out little round circles of felt, maybe a centimeter in diameter, and glued them to the top of the filbert as ears. Drew eyes, nose, little mouth and whiskers on the flibert to make a little mouse face. We added a piece of yarn to the bottom as a tail and a little loop on top, and voilá! Mice in a bassinet! I still have one of those mice, and I think my mom does, too.
Not exactly what you’re looking for, but once when I was a toddler we had tinsel on the tree because my mom bitched and moaned about how they always had tinsel when she was a kid (and by the way the more you think about it the weirder a word “tinsel” is and why do we have a word for that?) so, you know, tinsel. It was EVERYWHERE. The entire rest of my childhood once a week or so I’d get a piece of tinsel or Easter grass stuck to my foot. In fact, I noticed last year when I was looking for Christmas music books in my mom’s piano bench that there in the corner of the bench was some damned tinsel. They have moved twice since the Year of the Tinsel.
We had this really old and crappy looking female angel. Her dress was supposed to be white but it was more of a nicotine tan and all messed up. Her halo was bent and her face wasnt so hot either. She went on the top of the tree. She was a family tradition I guess.
I always had this idea that she was a drunken, fallen angel on hard times, walked the street, pissed off the wrong person during the holidays and had a christmas tree shoved up her backside.
Once I made gingerbread men because I have theeee best recipe ever and since I had assorted cookie cutters in one of those ‘four zilloon cookie cutter VALUE PAK!!’ boxes, well…why not?
Little CP put a kippah on his head when we were frosting without even thinking about it. I’m like, What’s that?
His kippah, duh. It cracked me up.
I have a mini festivus pole at my house. 
For the rest of us.
I haven’t thought about that for years. That was fun.
My holy grail is a revolving musical tree stand my great aunt sent back from Austria while she was working for the U.N. right after WWII. It wound up, played 5 carols (two of them unusual) and you could plug lights into the base. No one in the family knows what happened to it.
We’ve found a few over the years on eBay and on auction websites, but they never play the right songs, or they’re broken, or insanely expensive. It looks like this.
A little elf, dressed in green. He was somewhat better constructed than all the other elves we had for the Christmas tree. As I recall, they were made of pipe cleaners dressed in blue or pink felt (blue for boy elves, pink for girls) with plastic heads; they tended to have arms or legs drop off over the years. But my little green-clad elf kept his limbs. He still has them all. Mom gave him to me along with a few other decorations when I moved out and he is in a box on a shelf upstairs in the storage room right now.
A “Shiny Brite” ornmament that had “Silent Night” in white sparkly flocking against a ombre pink glass ball. It was the prettiest thing in my 6 year old imagination. Wish I could find another one.
UT
I didn’t realize the candle windmill carousel thing was so popular. My grandmother had a very nice one and she always lit it the night we did the tree. And we did have fresh popcorn and cranberries for the garland and the tree sparkled from the tinsel and the color wheel light. We had a topper made of cardboard and aluminum foil, a star my brother made as a kid.There was a plug-in Frosty that went in the front window, the old plastic kind, not the inflatable things everyone has now. And the fat bulb lights. But that candle angel carousel was my favorite.
I ordered one online thinking to relive the memory but it’s a cheap tin and never spins properly like my Nanny’s did.
Every year we decorated on my birthday, December 12th. My grandma made friendship bread and cocoa and we listened to Dolly Parton sing Coat of Many Colors on the Country Christmas Classics 8 track tape.
OOh I also remember every year I’d stick a piece of tinsel to the television and holler to my Pawpaw that the tv screen was cracked. And he’d always pretend to fall for it.
These are what I was talking about, I didn’t know filbert=hazelnut, I had to go look it up lol.
I remember some others! The ones I spoke of before were my mom’s, at Grandma’s she has some elves made of bells (the body is a large bell like jingle bells) and the head/arms/legs are sewn. My aunt made a bunch one year. Grandma also has an elf ladder, I think she and Grandpa made it. Grandpa the ladder and Grandma the elves. So cute.
I remember very fondly the large, opaque Christmas lights (I think they’re called C9s) that my grandpa used to string up outside along the bushes lining his large brick front porch. Also, I absolutely adored (and still do adore, as I’ve still got 'em) the yearly commemorative Hallmark glass Peanuts ornaments.
Mmm, all those toxic chemical crafts…Christmas never smelt the same post 70’s. 