When I was a very little girl, we always had a real Christmas tree, usually a Douglas fir, because Mom liked the spaces between the boughs. She may have liked the spaces but she HATED the needles.
When I was around 8 or 9, my parents bought an artificial tree, white flocked, with a color wheel which rotated and bathed the tree in red, blue, green, or orange light. On this wonderful tree, Mom hung all maroon bulbs. I don't know why.
Then all of us kids grew up and moved out. The years that we all came home for Christmas, Mom would break out the tree and we all made fun of it. Not very charitable and not very Christmassy but very, very easy to do. It was a terrible tree.
In 1975, Mom bought one of these trees. Vern's wife made it in pottery class. Actually, I'm pretty sure she bought the greenware and glazed it but she made it nonetheless. Vern was a guy who worked with my Dad and the first car I drove after Steve died was a 1960 Cadillac that Mom and Dad bought from Vern for me.
Anyway, this tree lived on top of Mom's TV from the day after Thanksgiving until New Year's Day and, no matter how much we harangued her, this was the tree ever after.
I think I have sort of compromised. I have an artificial tree, but is is a Scottish pine because I like the fullness. It is about 3 feet tall and it sits on a console table that I have because that way the dogs wouldn't knock it over. Looking at it tonight, I think that I may have combined all the trees of my childhood into one. Now all I need is a color wheel!
2 comments:
My great-grandmother had one of those silver artificial trees with the color wheel. I think my cousin's still got the thing somewhere!
I grew up with live trees - always gotten on Christmas eve because they were practically giving them away by then. It stayed up a long, long time - until Easter sometimes.
When I married husband #2, he traveled a lot so the first year I bought a really good artificial tree (couldn't even tell it was fake). He was so angry... said he hated fake trees. Well, by the time that year's Christmas was over, he loved it. No messy needles everywhere. Easy to take down. No disposal required.
When that tree finally bit the dust, we went back to live trees because he thought our son should have live trees. Then he got all attached to a tree, named it Steve and cried and cried when "Steve" had to be taken down (fire hazard by then). Sobbed when we left "Steve" all alone in the forest. DH and I discussed this afterwards and decided to look for another artificial tree.
Now we have a 5 foot tree - pre-lit! I love it! It doesn't take up much room and you don't have to mess with it too much. A happy medium!
my late sis had one of those silver trees with the color wheel.
She said it was because she lived in southern California.
My thoughts are if you don't have a real tree, don't have one. So sometimes I don't have one. Makes an easy clean up
signed, scrooge
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