The most important decorating rule was that a rather unattractive ornament that I believe my maternal grandmother gave to us would always be placed on the lowest branch on the side of the tree facing the wall so that we could technically say we hung the damn thing up without having to actually look at it. She has since passed, and it has conveniently disappeared.
I grew up in a real tree household and continued for a while after I was married. Once our lives got busy with driving kids around to hockey & basketball practices and games, I switched to a fake tree. That way I could put it up whenever I had a spare couple of hours and it could remain up for as long as I needed. My tree has colored lights, retro ornaments, kids handmade ornaments, ornaments that have special meanings, animals, angels, etc. I always have had a star on top. Also garland and sometimes beads.
For a while, i used to trade ornaments with friends. Each of use would bring one of the ordinary box set ornaments from our tree and then trade them. This would increase the variety of ornaments on all our trees since we had different sets. Now I have most of my red/green ornaments but also a blue and silver one from one friend, a gold one from another friend, a glittery silver one from another friend, etc… And each of them has one of mine and each others’ ornaments.
I have to say, I HATE some of the ornaments that my mom started buying at dollar stores: kitschy plastic toys of things like an elf in Santa’s workshop, or a scene of two penguins on a sleigh. Basically 3D versions of paintings of little big-eyed children or Thomas Kincaid landscapes. I don’t mind mass-produced ornaments of balls, stars, snowflakes and the like. But man, the schlock they sell in Target and Walmart that’s supposed to be cute just disgusts me as a twee, joyless, tasteless waste of resources.
Just posted a picture of ours over in the Christmas tree picture thread. My wife and I have always bought real trees, though we both grew up in houses that used artificial trees. Early on, when we didn’t have easy access to a good tree farm or the like, we used to buy them mail order! It was funny to see how narrow the boxes were they shipped them in. For many years now we’ve bought our tree from a local garden center that usually has a very good selection, and whose trees we trust to last well.
We’ve changed our preferences in lights over the years. We used to do a mix of white and colored lights, recently we’ve decided to stick with just white lights. We put ones toward the trunk that slowly twinkle on and off, and steady ones toward the outside.
Ornaments are an eclectic mix, things we’ve picked up over the years that mean something to us or that we just like the looks of. We’ve never done a themed tree.
One of the selling points for us when we bought this house was the bay window that’s a perfect location for the tree.