My mother was in the antithesis of this…our trees always looked like the trees from the 50s…if you’ve ever seen the movie “The Bishop’s Wife” with Cary Grant, and remember the tree in it, that’s what our tree looked like every year. And whenever you walked past the darn thing, you’d get a tree’s worth of tinsel on your sweater. Needless to say, I’ve grown away from using quite so much 
I like your tree, emm. Very elegant in it’s simplicity. Very nice 
I’m with your momma on this one Iz. Much to my girls horror, as soon as they left home, I started doing up the tree like the ones I grew up with-50’s. So, in addition to the pre-lit lights I add those big ole colored bulbs, bubble lights, only the old shiny ornaments and lots and lots of tinsel.
A week or so ago, my younger daughter was helping me with the tree(which is fake 
due to dh allergies)
She begged “Please, please don’t put tinsel on it.”
“You’ve got your own tree- mine has tinsel”, I say as I pull out a brand new box of tinsel.
My complaint is that this tinsel we have now just ain’t what it use to be. The weight and crinklyness is gone.
( I do pacify the girls with a tree in the morning room that is decorated with the unshiny ornaments from their childhood)
Oh, I just remembered “angel hair”…
My mother in law said it used to be made out of lead, which is what gave it it’s weight and stuff. She misses it too…I don’t ever remember having it like that. I just remember my mom using umpteen boxes of the skinny stuff to make the tree look right. Although, you CAN get the wider tinsel which is at least similar to the old kind (at least according to my mother in law). She got us some last year, and I admit I liked how it looked far better than the skinny tinsel. It’s all attached at the top, so you have to cut the tinsel off, then you can put it on the tree. It also doesn’t stick to you as much when you walk by it.
Yes, the tinsel-free look is definitely a departure from my childhood.
It was the narrow boxes full of the lightweight flighty stuff. We, the kids, would apply it
to the tree in chunks, which my mother–later–would redistribute according to her 2 strand
at a time sensibility.
I don’t know exactly when I grew opposed to the stuff. Probably around the time I decreed that
my windows would never have “treatments” and I swore off bric a brac.
This is not to say that if you visited my house you would find it free of clutter. But the closest thing
to Spring cleaning that I do is periodic mass removals of stuff, with a careful eye toward
what is likely to be noticed or missed and what is not.
Still, we find ourselves awash in pet hair, newspapers, books and papers of all sorts…there’s simply
no way to accommodate tinsel. 
wait..just a blind guess here… was your mother raised during the depression??
then, after Christmas, the strands were carefully removed form the tree and repackaged for use next year?
I have what I term a “shoe box tree,” because it fits inside a shoe box. My little tree is about 10 inches tall and is decorated with faux pearls, paper cardinal birds and tiny paper flowers.
I love my shoe box tree. Some years I also set up a similarly small train set to circle around the tree. I have too much clutter for the train this year.
‘zatly! luckily Ma gave up early on “the kids” doin’ the tinsel. We we pretty good at training her.
Well, lemme see here…the Great Depression was roughly '29 to '39, and she was born in '35…and, yes, a certain Depression mentality was certainly present during her early years–she has referred to it.
But I think she just didn’t like the globs. She found them too globby. She doesn’t use tinsel anymore, anyway.
(It was always saved for next year though, you got that part right.)
Wow..I thought my eighteen year old artificial tree was hanging in well…
A natural tree would last about ten minutes here because I like to keep the place as warm as a sauna.
There are three things I hate and one of them is being cold.
The Tree is up and decorated with the usual collection of Lights, Baubles and Beads..and a ton of Tinsel.
The funny thing is that I won’t be here on the day..I’ve been press ganged to her sons place for Christmas.
The first Time in fiftyone years I have been away from my home at Christmas..such is Life.
Slan,
D. 
We belong to the No Tree Because of the Cats group. Besides, we are never home at Christmas. For the past five or six years we have been in Cabo San Lucas for that week and will be again this year. Before that it was skiing at Whistler.
Still,
Feliz Navidad to all,
Sandy
Sandy, please don’t take this badly (as we go into a week of record cold, 10-20 record) but
bugger off!
Thank you, 
Denny
Hmmm … temperature in Huntington Beach at about 1:30 pm Dec 14 – 56F
Temperature in Cabo San Lucas --83F
Temperature in Spokane, Wa – 6F
Can I come with you???
“Be an angel, honey, and ask grampy where he wants the tree.”
“… Gramma!”
Good grief…what a wimp
We stopped doing the big Christmas tree years ago 'cause we were tired of cleaning up the cat hurl after they’d eat the needles. Last year we tried using a miniature, plastic, pre-lighted tree. We set it in the middle of the table and decorated it with miniature ornaments. An hour later, we came into the room to find the tree on its side with the cat astraddle and chewing like there’s no tomorrow.
This year, the mini-tree is atop a bookcase, well out of reach for our elderly kitty. It taunts her, though. She paces back and forth in front of the bookcase, glaring at the tree. It’s evil, and in need of a good pouncing. Ah… I do love tormenting the cat.
Bought a tree for my flat this year, the cat had a bit of a chew when it came out of the box, got a bop on the nose for it’s troubles (guess it should have waited until I’d moved away from the tree) and he’s hardly touched it since. I’m amazed.
I was sure I’d have a constant battle on my hands to stop him climbing thing and pulling it down.
Maybe he’s just biding his time.
The first Christmas after we got married, my wife and I were visiting my parents and we had the cat with us. One afternoon, I walked into the den to see the cat peering out of the middle of the Christmas tree. Now, there were fragile, glass ornaments on that tree that were older than me, and the tree was starting to sway back and forth. I quickly pulled the beastie out of the tree (acquiring a few scratches for my efforts, from both cat and tree) and confined her to a different room. The next year, my dad managed to find a tree with branches spaced so tightly that the cat couldn’t fing a gap to climb up it. She circled for hours with no luck.
Denny, I take nothing personally. (But I do gloat a bit. 
) Charlene, the temp has dropped to 53 at 2:30 PM today after heavy early morning rains. Forecast is for the temperature to plummet to 45 tonight. 
Can’t wait to get to Cabo. The second week of January I’ll be doing a flyover on my way to Vancouver and up to Whistler. I’d like warmer weather at the airport and some more snow on the mountain. I understand from local friends they need it.
Sandy
Hey we always saved the tinsel for the next year..and yes,my mom was a child of the depression, born in 1924. I never even thought about why we would have always saved it.
And tinsel must never be “globbed”. 
I’ve also got some old red and silver metallic garland like this-
and two ancient strands of red celluloid garland-
Uh oh, in looking for some pictures I found some more stuff on that auction site…
Our tree is up!
It is an artificial one, as for many years we too had cats, but it looks good. The decorations are a strange mixture, and I love to see them again each year. Some were my grandmother’s, some came from my parents, yet others were gifts from my mother or sister, and a few I have chosen myself. It is like meeting old friends.
We have some nice fat tinsel, too.
Lesley