Here’s a pic (assuming this works) :
https://1drv.ms/i/c/b021fb3140391ebe/EQCQzJrnvxVJpKa-WUYYELQBNWm_7k3BIo23-ho7W7zjyw
I wasn’t in the mood, so my husband helped our 4 year old decorate the tree this year. We have random decorations including her homemade ones, and it looks great, they did a good job. I do like the look of the themed trees, but I don’t think I’d do it myself.
(Recently my mum found a photo of one of the trees me and my sisters decorated as kids. We had great fun doing it, but the picture was hideous - lametta trailing everywhere. Had no idea at the time.)
This is the last tree I put up. I’d bought the tree for half-price after Christmas several years ago and then spent the year hunting on ebay for the retro ornaments. The cats didn’t seem to bother it. Until I woke up one day and found it on the floor with several of the ornaments broken. Maybe someday when I don’t have cats, I will try this again.
I’d pay good money to see you lugging a tree on the back of your hog. Keep me posted. 
Fake.
Green.
Dozens of multicolored mini-lights.
Multitude of personal ornaments (from her students, choir members, etc.) Plus, a ball ornament for each of our deceased pets.
I rigged a blinking multicolored LED inside a star for the top of the tree.
Lovely! Looks like ours but ours is fatter.
In fact, all the trees in this post are well done and festive. And no, I’m not drunk.
Random. Why? Every year is unique (except for an angel on top). It’s more fun and non stressful to decorate. The decorations accumulated randomly over the years when our kids were little and bring back nice memories as we decorate.
Would prefer real, but fake trees are better for people with allergies.
Random ornaments. One or two ornaments per branch. I don’t like trees that have so many ornaments that you cannot see any foliage.
As a kid, I preferred a star at the top, rather than an angel. Today, I cannot find a star that I like. The angels look less tacky.
A tinsel rope, spiraling up the tree. I used to love the “icicle” tinsel. Today, I would hate to clean it up.
I was fond of the old glass globe ornaments. The new plastic ones are more durable, but up close, don’t look as good.
Colored lights should blink. White lights should not.
There was something magical about getting close to a glass globe, and seeing the reflections in its surface. The new ones don’t have that mirror finish. Get close to one, and you see . . . a piece of plastic.
I always get a kick out of the term “real tree”. As thought my artificial tree is imaginary!
A couple of years ago, we got a narrow artificial tree. It really is nice that it takes up less of the living room, and does not necessitate moving all the furniture. Also loe that the lights stay on it when stored.
Ours is kinda oldtime/nature themed. A lot of cardinals and pine cones and leaded glass. White lites. I prefer colored, but my wife prefers white. Also, we don’t care for any of the LED colors. And gotta have the pickle!
Do those of you who enjoy Christmas trees grow up in a home that had one? I didn’t, and I don’t see the appeal. (but I can imagine some nostalgia if you grew up with a decorated tree in the house for holidays.)
I don’t put up a Christmas tree because 1) I am of modest means and have a very small apartment and 2) I don’t really have who to share it with. However, were this to change, I would love to put up a Christmas tree. My preferences can be summarized in one word: traditional.
First point, I really have to get this one out: unlike a lot of the posters above, I would insist on a real tree. Artificial trees are OK in offices and malls, but NOT IN MY HOUSE. For me “no tree” is preferable to an artificial tree. It’s part of a general life principle of mine that, with case-specific exceptions, a natural thing where available is usually preferable to an artificial one.
In my family, we decorated a tree from when I was at least, say, four, to probably somewhere in my teens. Until I was nine, we always had a real tree. I loved seeing a big natural tree being brought home and the fresh natural smell of the needles. That year, we had what must have been our biggest, most richly decorated tree ever; unfortunately, it toppled over and fell. The next year, my parents got an artificial tree. I wasn’t too crazy about the thing. It fulfilled its function, but you had to put it together and take it apart every year, and the plastic had its own smell, which called to mind a faint fake raisin aroma. In short, a completely lackluster object.
When I was 16, my mother was inspired to buy a real tree. However, by this time, she had developed an allergy to smells; various odors would give her an instant migraine. For that reason, we had a fully decorated tree on the back porch during a cold Toronto December. That would possibly have been the last year we decorated a tree.
I would like the kind of Christmas decorations we used; many of them were classic European ones, some brought from the old country (I.E., the former Jugoslavia). These had various shapes; some had a concave front to the ball that was nicely painted; one was a glass bird of paradise, and so on. I now live in Prague; here it is easy to get such ornaments. That said, I’m open to other options. A string of small lights might complete the tree.
As a final note, last year I re-started an old country tradition; I had a “badnjak” (a small oak twig), a tradition kept in Serbia for Christmas according to the Julian Calendar (where Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are on the 6th and 7th of January). I got it in the little wood on the slope near my apartment.
In the past, my family would get them at a Serbian church in Toronto or in the Serbian Centre in nearby Mississauga on Christmas Eve; one year, my father and I got it from a woodlot in our neighborhood. This year, I plan to try to get a bigger one and maybe put modest decorations on them.
After I started living on my own and couldn’t afford a real tree, I would stop at a tree lot on the way home from my mother’s house on Christmas Eve and take one of the leftovers. I’d get one of the most pitiful ones and it gave me joy to make them beautiful. I did this for many years until the lots started taking all the trees away early on Christmas Eve. Then I would drive through a ritzy area on my way home and would find a tree that some family had put on the curb because they left town. Free trees was my Christmas tradition. I didn’t buy one until I bought my house 20 years ago.
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Do those of you who enjoy Christmas trees grow up in a home that had one? I didn’t, and I don’t see the appeal. (but I can imagine some nostalgia if you grew up with a decorated tree in the house for holidays.)
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Yes. I haven’t had a year in my life without one. Some years it was a very diminutive fake tree but I’ve always had one. Also, I’m an atheist.
I think it has a pretty strong nostalgia thing to it. Decorating the tree brings back good memories of the same from my childhood.
I got to that point some years ago. Since moving here, we’ve almost always gone to my mom’s or my brother’s for the family Christmas gathering, except for the couple of years we went to Ocala to spend the holiday with my in-laws. Plus with the various dogs and cats over the years, a tree was more of a hazard than anything. So I gave everything away - mostly to my daughter.
But to answer the question, I’ve never done a themed tree - it’s always been random ornaments that appealed to me. My mom never did theme trees either. We went to a fund-raiser where they planned to auction a variety of themed trees - frankly, they struck me more as the sort of thing you’d see decorating a commercial establishment. Just not my preference.
Themed. Our current theme is mushrooms or more specifically Amanita muscaria. Started with some glass baubles from a German Christmas market and snowballed… lots of toadstool baubles and lights, and everything else is red or white/silver.
That spotted mushrooms aren’t actually a traditional seasonal item is just a bonus.
Before this we’ve always stuck to limited palletes anyway, but I suspect the fly agarics are now going to be our forever thing. We’re just that toadstool tree family, now.
Yes I did.
Sanitized themed trees are for institutions. Chaotic eclectic trees are for families. Oh, this is the one Aunt Edna gave us years ago; we can’t leave that off. And the one Jimmy made in second grade. And the one we brought back from our trip to Timbuktu, of course we need to put that one up.
Said like some families aren’t institutions 
My family should be institutionalized. 