Christmas Trees of Years Past

Our family tree in 1983

When I was growing up, we would always get huge trees that would nearly scrape the high ceilings of our Capitol Hill home.  Then we would cover it with every light, ornament, strand of garland, and any other decoration we had.  To my childhood mind, leaving one off would mean leaving a dear friend out of the holiday celebration.  The result was not necessarily the most elegant or tasteful tree.  But it contained more memories than you could count.

We still have that angel - she's older than I am!

Over the years, my mother added some small trees to the other rooms of our house, to allow for the chance to decorate with a single theme, while still allowing her children the giant tree of mismatched ornaments.  Along with the Christmas pillows, garland on the banister, bathroom towels, and countless other decorations, the house was always a holiday wonderland.  We even had an electric train set with enough track that the train was able to travel the entire length of our house one year, and loop back around under the tree.  Looking back, I think my parents probably had more fun with that train than we did.

Now that I am an adult and have my own house to decorate, I am confined by limited storage space to keep a lot of ornaments and decorations, or to move that table from my front bay window to make room for a full-sized tree.  Maybe next year.

I somehow never got a full picture of the silver tree, but I think this captures the spirit

A few years ago I was in a bit of an exuberant mood when the holidays arrived, and didn’t want to deal with the mess and hassle of a real tree, so I bought a silver tinsel tree.  Yes, silver.  It was obnoxious and awesome.  I filled it with every ornament I had – a mix of childhood ones, some new ones that have been given as gifts over the years, and a collection of White House ornaments.  Just like my tree growing up, they all clashed but all had to be included.

My tree this year

This year I pulled out the silver tree and could see it just didn’t have another year in it.  It was more like the sad little one in a Charlie Brown’s Christmas – if there was a Las Vegas version.  So I went over to Eastern Market and found the last 4-foot tree, which happened to be a pretty nice, little (but very fat) tree that has now been filling my house with a wonderful smell that screams Christmas.

And again, I have filled it with a mix of ornaments and tinsel, and topped it with a crazy silver star that I saw downtown a few weeks ago.

The awesomely tacky gold tree with red lights

My mom knew that part of me still missed that tacky silver tree, so she gave me an early Christmas gift – an even tackier gold tree with gold lights.  I have now officially started my collection of mini trees, just as she had done.  And it looks amazingly good in my orange dining room.

One of my favorites from when I was a kid- the mascot of my mom's toy store at Eastern Market, Phineas Frog & Friends