When you’ve finally dealt with the leftovers and gotten back on the diet, it’s time to think seriously about Christmas. You’ve probably already put up the Christmas tree, most people do these days, especially if they have a good-looking artificial tree that won’t have to be watered for almost a month. I remember when the only artificial trees scarcely resembled real evergreen trees at all.
If you remember those cheap tissue-paper imitation Hawaiian leis that were about an inch in diameter, you can imagine little paper trees that were merely the same green paper “needles” twisted on wire rather than string and fastened to a central stick. None of them ever fooled anyone into thinking they were real trees and most of them were just small, table-top decorations. There was a brief period of plastic trees, inconveniently heavy and soon banished as fire hazards, followed by shiny aluminum ones that, because they were made of metal, could not be festooned with electric lights. Somewhere along about that time, flocked trees had a period of fame.
Department store displays probably were the cause of the mad desire to have a tree that seemed to be laden with freshly-fallen snow. It wasn’t long before you could have your tree “flocked” by being sprayed with sticky cellulose fibers or do it yourself with shaving cream or even shredded coconut (neither very successful, but people did try.) Soon to follow were trees flocked with pastel-tinted “snow.” First pink, closely followed by baby blue, lavender and aqua. Fortunately the practice faded pretty much before we had to suffer through fire engine red, navy blue, and purple (I don’t suppose there would have been much demand for forest green if things had gone that far.)
The holiday decorations in my family seldom varied from year to year. Even those dangly tinsel “icicles” were carefully removed and wrapped in tissue paper for re-use the next year. They were not the lightweight plastic ones we have today, but made of heavy, leaded foil – crimped to add sparkle and blue on one side, silver on the other. Blown glass ornaments were few and treasured. Even chipped and broken ones, if mostly intact, were used. Most of the tree ornaments seemed to have been purchased separately, with only one set of nine similar ones that might have come in a box together. There were two delicate glass birds with shimmery glass fiber tails that were attached to the tree by clips rather than hooks. One string of eight flame-shaped colored lights, sometimes nestled in spun glass “angel hair” gave off a dim glow. Nearly all tree ornaments (except for the ones we made ourselves) were of blown glass and made in Germany. It seemed appropriate, since the idea of a decorated tree originated in Germany with Martin Luther and was introduced to the rest of the world by Prince Albert’s gift of a decorated tree to his bride, the young Queen Victoria.
Some people today decorate their entire houses for Christmas, inside and out, but the only decorations, aside from the tree or an occasional table centerpiece, that I remember are two tissue paper wreaths framing electric candles that were placed in windows for the benefit of passers-by. These had to be placed in windows with access to electric outlets, and sometimes required an elaborate arrangement of extension cords.
Until the early fifties, most of our Christmas trees were scrawny Douglas firs that required our filling in gaps with tissue paper garlands or construction paper chains. Before the advent of cut-your-own tree farms, Dad sometimes arranged with farmers he knew for us to cut a tree on their property.
We decorated the tree on Christmas Eve and put our own real stockings on the floor under the tree before going to bed. We never had special Christmas stockings hanging from the fireplace mantle like the ones we saw on Christmas cards. Well, we didn’t have a fireplace, for one thing, and our longest, stretchiest winter stockings could hold a lot more goodies than one of those magazine-inspired, felt stockings with our names spelled out in glittery sequins.