I’m thinking about doing garlands instead of the tree this year. I have a ~three-fot artificical tree and my ornaments are starting to outgrow it!
My parents have moved a few times over the years and one item that bit the dust was a styrofoam ball ornament I probably made in kindergarten. A little bit of glitter, a couple of toothpicks and a wire stuck in it to hang it. I was horrified that it was allowed to be thrown out so I made them a new grown-up version of the same!
This is not strictly a tree quirk, but we have this manger scene, beautifully carved, and Mr. Rilch has gotten into the habit of calling it a menorah. He does this on purpose, just to aggravate me, even to the point of labeling the box “Menorah”. He just wants to see how far I’ll go in correcting him (this year it was pulling up Wikipedia to show him the entries for “menorah” and “Nativity scene” – they don’t have an entry for “manger scene”). I no longer remember how this got started, but he does it at every opportunity. “Oops, I knocked a shepherd out of the menorah!”
Okay, tree quirks. The ornament is The Blue Mustang. It’s a blown-glass blue horse, now missing a leg, poor thing. It’s in its own box, and is the last to go on the tree. Tree is not complete until The Blue Mustang is in a safe place, where it can be seen but is in no risk of being brushed off.
Other blue items: The candy canes. They were always blue, they didn’t get that way, but they are 18 years old this year. My mom got them because I don’t like peppermint, but after trying one and deciding that I didn’t like this flavor either (bubblegum? I don’t remember), they became strictly decorative. Visitors are always warned.
Mr. Rilch puts some of the ornaments “inside” the tree. I never thought of doing that before I saw him do it, but it’s a great idea. Further insurance against breakage.
I’m another one where the star has to go on last, absolutely last. Most years, after the tree is completely finished, we will come across a stray ornament that we bought during the year and “put aside” and then forgot about, and I throw up my hands and say “oh, for Pete’s sake” and make a big production about grumbling about it when it goes on the tree.
Now that I think about it, we don’t even have a star, we have an angel, but my parents’ tree has a star and now I use “star” as a synonym for “tree topper.” I guess that’s a quirk, too! If I’m at someone else’s house and they have a beautiful angel or bow or something, I will say “oh, I love your star!”
Taking down the tree, each ornament goes in its own plastic baggie (or box if it originally came in a box) with a gift tag that says where and when we got it. That is probably less of a quirk and more OCD. I do think it is nice to read the tags every year, especially for the ones that were gifts because I like remembering people and occasions.
My parents raised me with a tree that had a solid two-color theme, but we threw in fun ornaments no matter what they looked like. Theirs was “Brass and Glass” (I know, they’re not really colors but it was a nice combo). Our tree now is Red and Silver, mostly with ornaments from IKEA. However, there are two ornaments that my mother gave me as a bridal shower gift. My name is Cassie (hence the small pink dragon on the left) and my husband’s name is Cliff (short for Clifford, as in the big red dog on the right).
There’s really only one set of “ornaments” I really wish I had that my parents are not willing to give up. When my mom and dad were first married, my dad (who’s a chemist) had some broken Technicon coils laying around the lab that were going to be thrown out. He thoroughly cleaned them, evened off the rough edges, and has been hanging them on the Christmas tree ever since. The light just sparkles off of the tightly-wound glass tubes.
In our travels all over the world, we bought ornaments like they were a prime investment for retirement. Now we have way too many, but can’t part with them, so we end up choosing what goes on the tree every year. The only consistency is that the small angels we bought in Portugal go on first. Neither of us is religious, but these were exceptionally well made and have a Victorian flavor to them. This year we put up the Villeroy glass balls and quite a few Alaskan ornaments, many of which are in animal shapes, some of which are in the old Tlinget style. The other ‘must hang’ is the crystal ‘first Christmas’ ornament I bought back when we met. No room for the African stuff this year.
The Marvin the Martian hand puppet as a tree topper?
We also have 4 or 5 tree-toppers. we have a pointy glass thing from my father’s grandparents, 2 stars from my husband’s family( one glass, one tinsel), a large brass star with lights woven in, and an angle that looks like a young Phyllis Diller.
My mother still has the blue blob I made back in first grade or so. I think it was supposed to be a snowman or something, but for some reason, it’s blue, made out of that homemade playdough equivalent stuff. I wish I knew why it was blue.
Thanks to two large and enthusiasic pups, there’s no tree, but in the attic there’s a box that has a bunch of ornaments collected over the years. They may not be elegant, but they’re fun! Nothing in our house ever matched, so why should the tree ornaments?
I don’t have my own yet (I always go visit Mom for Christmas), but I still help decorate hers. Many, many years ago (when I was about 8, I think), we had a live tree which we cut from a neighbor’s yard, and we found an abandoned bird’s nest nestled in it. Ever since then, I’ve had the responsibility of putting that nest in an appropriate nook or cranny in the tree, along with a life-sized embroidered bird ornament we have. This past year, though, it finally completely disintegrated, so we won’t be repeating it this year.
A similarly long time ago in my childhood, we had a pet hamster, and my sister tried to make a statue of him out of play-doh. But it turned out to look not at all like a hamster, and a good deal like a pig, so that play-doh pig (green, I think) became a permanent member of the Nativity scene (never mind what a pig was doing in a Jewish stable). She’s had to re-make him a few times over the years, as he occasionally falls, or gets chewed up by a dog or cat, or is otherwise damaged.
And all angel ornaments, other than the topper, hang on the lower branches of the tree, so as to be near that same Nativity scene. This even includes a few fragile ones, despite our cats, so those end up needing to be repaired often.
The general theme is always ecclectic, with the sort of assortment of sentimental ornaments others have described. One year we got a much larger tree than usual, and Mom, worried that our ornaments wouldn’t be enough, bought a set of the standard ball ornaments, but it seems that our sentimental bricbrac somehow manages to be exactly enough to cover a tree of any size.
I have the original family aluminum tree with the original 1957 color wheel that my dad bought when he was a cutting edge hep-cat daddio. about 10 years ago I found my mom still had it in the attic. It had not seen the light of day since 1970. I have been proudly diplaying this since then, and it’s stilll working on the original light bulb! I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s so retro-retro.
Every year, we take a clear glass ornament and paint markers, and draw something representing the previous year. We have a pink chicken thing that’s supposed to be a flamingo, from the year we went to Florida. We have 2 angry cat faces and a squalling baby face, from the year my son was born.
I can’t decide what to draw for this year.
Our financial situation got a big boost, so I thought about dollar signs. But, I’m kind of superstitious about things like that. I may draw my dog’s face with his right eye kind of wonky, because he was diagnosed we glaucoma.
