Christmas Tree trivia

Here are three questions about Christmas tree history.
Which American President began the ceremony of adding electric lights to the outdoor White House Christmas tree and having a ceremony when lighting the tree?
Herbert Hoover?
Calvin Coolidge?
Theodore Roosevelt?
The answer is President Coolidge in 1923.

When and where was tinsel invented?
Tinsel was invented in Germany around 1610 and was originally made from silver by machines which stretched the silver into paper thin strips.

It is fun to visit Christmas tree farms. How many states in the United States have these farms?
40?
50?
48?
The answer is 50 since there are Christmas tree farms in all 50 states.

Some Christmas Tree Facts

By now I'm sure my coauthors have given all the excellent tips I would have shared for your real Christmas Tree. Here are a few facts though that might be of interest:

• Real trees are a renewable, recyclable resource if you want to be "green."
• Real trees are grown in all 50 states
• There are about one million acres in produciton for growing Christmas trees. Each acre provides the daily oxygen requirements of 18 people.
• For every real Christmas tree harvested, 2-3 seedlings are planted in its place the following spring.
• It can take as many as 15 years to grow a tree of average retail sale height, but the average growing time is seven years.

This information came from the Northeast Ohio Christmas Tree Growers.

Aluminum, Artificial, or Real?

In a world where things are always changing and progress happens in the blink of an eye, there is one constant that brings most of us all together again--Christmas. The things of Christmas have changed over the years though. Take trees for instance.

Growing up, there was always a live tree for our Christmas. I don't know that artificial was even available in those early years. The bulbs were multi-colored and hot to the touch and silver tinsel a must. But along came the aluminum tree. The silvered branches changed color as a disc with four basic colors, red, purple, and yellow, rotated in front of a spot light that shone on the tree. Mom refused to have one. I'm grateful.

There was one year when she succumbed to flocking the tree. I don't know how she talked Dad into it because I seem to recall him wrinkling up his nose every time he looked at it. Maybe she sold him on the idea because it was supposed to preserve the tree longer and he hated cleaning up after a dry tree.

Of course the more popular artificial trees became, the more outrageous they got--pink and purple and white. Each year we passed on the latest fad and stayed true to the real smell, the real feel and the real mess of needles to clean up.

Mom gave in to the artificial world when the trees became a little more realistic looking and my brother and I were gone. That way she could get us to come home and put up the tree early. Mom was not above a guilt trip. "I don't think we'll have a tree this year," always brought us home to decorate.

My husband, Bob, and I started out with real trees. Our first, which was the most perfect tree I remember, stretched our budget at a cost of $5. A couple years ago we had to shop for a new tree since we lost ours in a flood. We thought we'd wait until after Christmas to shop for the artificial tree on sale and put up a real tree for that year--until we looked at the prices. A nice Christmas tree, a real one, goes for around $70 in our area. We bided our time and found an early sale on an artificial one and saved on the needle mess as well.

While we were out shopping for the tree, we saw aluminum trees trying to make a comeback and some artificial trees that were flocked. It made me think of all the changes over the years and the one thing that has remained constant: The reason for the season--Jesus.

Favorite Decorations

Our topic is favorite Christmas decorations and I choose “the sum total of sparkles, lights, color, and the smell of pine boughs.”

Holiday towels with snowmen on them, decorative stockings hung in unexpected places, 15 wooden nutcrackers marching across our fireplace mantle, our door wreath of gold jingle bells, two nativity sets, and the star of the show: the tree.

Our tree usually reaches to the ceiling and is always topped with an angel in a white gown, who holds a candle-appearing miniature light, and the tree branches are weighed down with an incredible assortment of ornaments.

Like me, do you exclaim “My sister gave us this ornament” and “You made this one”? Some ornaments were made of dough in the 1970s and painted with model car enamel paints and include Mrs. Santa with cotton balls for her hair, the worm Ouroboros, and a red apple with a cute caterpillar smiling at us.

Lots of cat, bird and angel ornaments and two Christmas spider ornaments with a legend behind them. The mysterious Christmas pickle ornament, put in a tucked away spot, and our new this year LED Christmas lights. I chose the small round bulbs for the LED lights, for a change of pace.

So, I admit that my favorite decoration is “all of the above.”

What is your own favorite or first decoration you display? I would enjoy reading your comment here.

Buying the Christmas Tree

Long before the artificial tree became popular, our family always had a real tree with all the wonderful pine smells and the after mess of dropped needles. As a child, I remember Mom sending my brother and me out with my father to purchase the tree each year. Looking back, it probably saved the stress of fighting over which tree to purchase and gave her some time to wrap gifts or do all those things a mom has to get done before Christmas.

We would walk through the lot, grab a tree that was leaning on a pile of others, shake it to see if the needles held on and then slowly turn it around to make sure it was full. I think my dad prided himself on choosing the best each year. We'd strap the tree to the top of the car and excitedly deliver it to the side porch at home until we were ready to bring it in to decorate.

The year we decided to spend Christmas at my parent's second home at Put-In-Bay, Ohio, was especially memorable. We loved the island and couldn't wait to spend the holiday there. The trouble was, there were no Christmas tree lots. They did things the old fashioned way; they went out into the woods and cut a tree. This time there was no need for us to shake the tree, although I suspect out of habit my dad did anyway. We used a saw to cut our tree. Then we fastened it to the old car Dad kept on the island for transportation.

When we got it home, we discovered the difference between trees straight from the woods and trees that were groomed all year for Christmas. There was a whole section of the tree missing! Mom decided the best thing was for Dad to stick it in a corner of the living room and hide the bare spot as best he could by tucking it between the two walls. Still upset by not having a perfect tree, my dad trimmed a few branches off the bottom and wired them to fill in the bare spot before he tucked it into the corner.

Needless to say, the cut branches wilted faster than the rest of the tree and the needles dropped all over our Christmas packages. It didn't bother my brother or me much at all. We swept aside the needles and dove in on Christmas morning. But every time I see the movie The Christmas Story where the father is so bent on the perfect turkey, I think about my dad and his need for the perfect tree.

Eventually as they got older and my brother and I started our own families, Mom and Dad gave in to the artificial tree. It certainly saved having to clean out the vacuum sweeper's hose each year. While we joked about it, they did draw the line at getting an aluminum one with the rotating colored light.

What's your vote? Artificial or real, needle-dropping, sappy but wonderfully smelling Christmas trees?

And speaking of artificial. . .in our book on page 45 there are instructions for making a snow scene for indoors. Here are some pictures of the one I made. The "flakes" are like very soft fluffy soap flakes. It took five days to get to the full snow scene.