What Kind of ....

[Jenny _S]

What kind of Christmas tree will you have this year?
Fake? Live in a pot? Or are you going to murder another real tree this year?

 

[English Lady]

Fake all the way here...I have a 2 year old....and well christmas tree spines and my daughter would not be a good combination

that reminds me..I need to check that the christmas tree actualy made the move.....hmmmmm i wonder where it might be?

 

[Icingsugar]

I grew up in the country. Go figure.

/Ice - axe ready

 

[Svenskaflicka]

I have a plastic tree that I re-use every year. I have a fetish for baubles in matte colours, so my tree usually ends up looking like it's got a rainbow-coloured touch of measles when I'm done.

This year, I'm gonna celebrate X-mas a little early, in two weeks or something, when Hubby comes over. He can't get free from work for X-mas , so we've decided that we'll have our own little celebration in advance. Mum begs me to come home for "real" X-mas, but I don't know...

 

[MathGirl]

Hiya, Svenska,
I have a nice blue spruce growing in a half whiskey barrel on my patio. I'll move it up next to the window and decorate it. Thay way, I can enjoy it, and there will be no mess inside.

Senor Alec Thompson likes to sleep in the barrel, so he'll be pissed off when I move it. He'll like the warm lights, though.
MG
Ps. My mother and I conveniently forget that we're some kind of Jewish this time of year.

 

[The_Fool]

We have four trees, all fake. Lets see....there's the fancy one in the formal dining room that has several car payments worth of fancy ornaments. The small one in one corner of the family room that has football and hunting ornaments. The other small one in the family room that has "antique" santas. The one on the landing going downstairs that is a "normal" tree.

Ba Humbug.

Fool

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

The tree may or may not be real.

I, on the other hand, will definitely be fake.

RF

 

[Guest]

Ours is fake. The real ones make me itch and turn my skin red.

 

[Jenny _S]

Hmmm

Well... I always use potted trees. Have for years.

I went out in the woods a couple of years ago and dug up a Douglas Fir tree about 2 feet tall, brought it home and potted it in a tub. It sat out on the deck for one Christmas. Last year I moved it inside for three weeks and used it for a Christmas tree. It was 4 feet tall. Now it's 5.5 feet tall and the damn tub is getting heavy

The tree I used before is now planted in the back yard and something like 18 feet tall. In about a centruy I'll reforest western Oregon.

In any case, I figure I can get this Christmas and next and maybe one more out of it before I have to dig another one.

 

[Parklife]

I'll have a real tree. I can't stand fake trees. I love the smell of a real tree. I also enjoy finding a stray needle or two in some tucked away place in March and remembering the holidays.

And I'll have to finally remember to not put glass balls anywhere near the bottom of the tree. Every year, my cocker spanial decides to 'un-decorate' my tree and see how far he can carry the bulbs before he drops them on the hard wood floors. I typically come home every day and fine 3-4 splatters of x-mas bulbs scattered throughout the house.

Park~

 

[Guest]

I have a heavy metal (not that kind) tree which I bought several years ago. I love it and decorate it sparely (including muertos), and it requires no water. It's 6' tall and about 5' wide at bottom. The pic gives an idea of it, mine is lovelier.

Perdita

 

[Quasimodem]

Your post about potted Christmas trees reminded me why my family gave up on that holiday staple.

When I was growing up, my Uncle, Orville Tanem, used to show up every Christmas Eve so potted he couldn't see straight. Invariably, during the evening, he would trip and fall into the Christmas Tree. That meant that the next Christmas, we had to buy all new lights, baubles and icicles. Even the pine cones were damaged.

This happened so often that eventually we wised up and bought rubber trees.

Finally we quit altogether.

Some good did come out of it, however. Uncle got a job with the American Forces in Vietnam, as part of the defoliation effort. They used him to body-bombed any forest they wanted knocked down.

Uncle became quite famous.

Surely you must have heard of him?

O. Tanem Bomb.

 

[Guest]

O. Tanem Bomb.

Quaz, that is sooooooooo off the charts. Muy bueno if one likes gagging over puns.

Spakeless,

Perdita

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

Quasi,

You've been watching so much Rocky and Bullwinkle. Keep it up.

Rumple Foreskin

ps: My aunt and uncle had a Siamese tom cat that kept eating the needles off their real Christmas trees. The problem was it'd then throw up the semi-digested mess and it's fur would start falling out. If the cat recovered in time, and it usually did, it'd eat some more needles.

They switched to an artificial tree. The cat still ate the needles, but it didn't throw up as much and its fur stayed in place.

RF

 

[Dirty Slut]

I inherited my tree...

My grandmother bought what I have always thought was the perfect 3-4 ft. high fake Christmas tree (that sits on my round table during the holidays) way back when they took care to make things last. It's just small enough to be wrapped up in a large plastic garbage bag, without taking any of the decorations off, to store up in the attic after the holiday season is over. In fact it hasn't been changed since she last used it before she passed away other than to add a couple of my own babbles, or change a light bulb. In this way I'll always feel her close by me during the holidays. But for me Christmas has never been about the tree, or the presents underneath.

In my family, every year we bake a birthday cake on Christmas Eve, but one week earlier when we do put the tree on display we also put out our collection of manger scenes through out the house without the baby Jesus in them. Then at the stroke of midnight on Christmas morning, or before going to bed on Christmas Eve; we put all of the baby Jesuses in their appropriat manger scene. The following morning, even before any of the presents are opened, we light the candles on the birthday cake, and sing "Happy Birthday," to the Lord Jesus. A simple ritual, true, but it has become a tradition in my family, and I couldn't think of a better way to remind us all just what Christmas is all about.

DS

 

[Mhari]

No tree, as I am not a real person yet. I'll be going home to my parents' fake tree, though. I might get a real pine wreath for my front door, though..

Some days, I wonder when I'll finally be All Grown Up. And how will I know??

 

[Wills]

DS

Fascinating insight.

Is that a family ritual or does it have some ethnicity element or roots. I only ask as my wife is researching rituals, specifically those to do with the making of breads and cakes.

Will's

PS. We bought a live tree when we moved to our house in UK 15 years ago and palnted it in the front garden. the tree is now taller than the house, it is that tree that we decorate. In the house we have lights around the windows and a nativity scene on a side table.

This year we will be in Portugal, maybe I'll put fairy lights on the scaffolding.

Will's

 

[CWatson]

You know, DS, I've always thought, in a vague and only-slightly-joking way, that people SHOULD do that. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one.

My family goes for the real ones. Ask again in five years or so, when you're more likely to find me in my own place; that'll be a REAL answer for you.


~CWatson
(pensive)

 

[McKenna]

.

 

[wornoutkeyboard]

Ps. My mother and I conveniently forget that we're some kind of Jewish this time of year.

I second that.

I am Jewish (as is my son) but Mr. WOK is Southern Baptist. But I have always celebrated x-mas because my father is catholic. (The passing for Jewish liniage is a funny thing.)

I also celebrate Chanukkah.

But I know what kind of Jew I am.... Ashkenazi.

~WOK

 

[Dirty Slut]

DS

Fascinating insight.

Is that a family ritual or does it have some ethnicity element or roots. I only ask as my wife is researching rituals, specifically those to do with the making of breads and cakes.
Will's

Yes, it is my family's ritual for Christmas. We do it to remind ourselves that the presents under the tree represent the real present that God gave us all, his son.

DS

PS: Whenever Saint Paul was asked: "How do I get to heaven?" He always answered: "Believe on the name Jesus Christ." In this way he explained to us all that basically it didn't matter how good we were that counted, but how good Jesus was that did count. The birthday cake reminds us of the bread he broke at the last supper calling it his flesh, and of the manna from God. Manna was the daily bread that was supplied by God to the Hebrews when they were in the wilderness. It was so important to them that it was one of the things that were put into the Ark of the Covenent along with the original Ten Commandments, and Moses's Staff. The manna represents their, and our refusal of God's nurishment. The broken stones represent their, and our breaking of God's laws. And the staff represents their, or anyone elses rebelion against God's chosen anointed one. The cake also represents the daily bread we speak of in the Lord's prayer, and the statement that man does not live by bread alone, but by the word of God..and Jesus, who was the Word of God said: "I am the way, the truth, and the light. Whom soever comes to me, comes to the father." Basically, bread, and cake are made of the same thing, though in different preportions. There's much more sugar in a cake, and much more flour in bread. One raises using baking power, the other rises using yeast.

 

[Wills]

DS

Thanks for that.

We take bread so much for granted but it has implications in religious, political and cultural forms that extend far beyond its basic use as a simple food. My wife organises forum's under the title Bread Matters, each one looks at a different aspect of cultural relationships to bread. The next one is in Ireland in about eighteen months.

The research she is working on is looking at the changes rituals undergo when people move out of their ethnic community to another society, linked with the social pressures etc to conform. For example, some aboriginal cultures have a ritual that requires a pregnant woman to eat a special bread made by her mother during the pregnancy and lactation, how does that ritual change if they move to live in a 'western society'. Does it become a ceremonial thing practiced only on 'home visits', is any part of the ritual passed on to her children. Its interesting stuff. After all, it is the rituals and traditions that tend to define our culture.

Will's

 

[Sabledrake]

Fake, because we tend to put it up early, leave it up late, and when we've tried with a real one we have a brittle firetrap of dry needles and a vacuuming nightmare.

Family anecdote: had a relative who was allergic to pine trees, so she always had to get a fake tree ... but she liked the smell of pine, so she bought and sprayed pine air freshener all over the house ... and had a massive allergic reaction, swelled up, turned red.

My father was a big cut-your-own aficionado, and tended to look for the mutant trees. I remember a year we had one that had grown with a trunk twisted in a spiral, and another that split off into a Siamese-twins tree about 6" up the trunk.

Sabledrake

 

[Boxlicker101]

We probably won't have a tree, which is a shame. In the house we have a toddler, who is 15 months old now, and if we had a tree, he would be always tipping it over. Right not, his thing is grabbing whatever he can and trying to remove them from where they are. Next year, maybe, because I really like Christmas trees.

 

[dee1124]

Real, though we have a very nice fake tree, too, which we used to use when going away at Christmas to visit family. Now they come to us, so it languishes in the basement. A couple of years ago, though, the real tree dried out so fast we undecorated it, threw it out, and put up the fake one. In a way I like the fake one better, because you can bend the branches to the right angles for holding ornaments, but there's nothing like the smell of a real tree.

-- Dee