Which are you ?

My daughter has an ultra-modern tree - all white lights and clear glass baubles, very stylish.....at least it was, till my grandsons covered it in their home made stars and trees which are full of sticky glue, glitter and cotton wool. Much better to see that homely touch, I think

I will be decorating mine with old and new, they do after all represent many Christmas's past and the one to come with the latest offerings from dgc which will take pride of place along with the ones their dads made at a similar age.

In 1984 I went on a short course to learn to make tree decorations, sadly these always bring tears to my eyes as my darling dad died on the 23rd of December that year

I add to my collection every year always waiting until a nearby garden centre has its post Christmas sale.

I love contemporary look as well but sentiment will always rule for me.

I tried the contemporary look last year but didn't really like it. Like many people, I have so many baubles now that I can ring the changes by using certain colours to get a different effect, so this year I have stuck to silver/gold/ red/green and to my mind it's still the best.Also, it seems to go with any decor. I do admire the all white/silver look though and if you have a very stylish and contempory home [I do not] this could be a good look.When you have grandchildren visiting the house they like to see a 'warm' look I think.However, I draw the line at tinsel, we are a tinsel free household ever since our children became young teenagers as I have never liked it.I used to do display work in a store, dressing many Christmas trees so I have seen all the colour combo's...... pink and purple [shudder.]

Not sure how I would classify mine, but it is lots of clear/white/plain lights, non flashing, silver tinsel, strings of silver beads and white and silver baubles. Then some silver bows on the ends of some of the branches and a silver star on top.

When Mr P and I first got together, neither of had any Christmas decorations, so we went out together to buy some and just decided on all silver.

The first year of our married life (1963) we brought home a bare branch from the woods, fixed it upright in a tub, painted it white and hung a few baubles on it. It looked good and cost almost nothing. It was contemporary then and would still be contemporary today.

Then we had real trees for a while, shedding needles and getting ragged looking after a few days. We bought various baubles and tinsel and I made little fake parcels out of Oxo boxes covered in Christmas wrapping paper to hang on it. These were added to in later years as I used more Oxos.

When I had had enough of vacuuming up pine needles, we bought an artificial tree. That has been going for about 35 years and still looks good. It gets the original glass baubles and later plastic ones, and the Oxo parcels are stored away each year and reused. The wrapping on them is of many designs. An ephemerals archive could date them by the paper.

Storing the tree became a problem when the original box disintegrated, but we bought a zip-up bag for it which has been splendid. It has handles, so can be easily retrieved from the loft.

Given up on trees. The cats demolished the baubles over the years and I hate the work involved in sweeping up the needles. I dislike artificial trees too so I just stick to holly and ivy gathered from the local woods. Mind you, I found the last piece of last year's holly lurking behind a picture in the hall last week....

I bought six lovely little glass angels last year, each playing a musical instrument or holding something. They sat on the mantelpiece for so long that it was not worth taking them down and putting them away. I have dusted underneath them and rearranged them for this Christmas.

I have an artificial tree that looks fairly authentic and I create the Christmassy smell with aerosols. My tree has white lights and gold and red baubles with some crystal drops that catch the light and sparkle. I put an angel on the top of the tree, she is dressed in gold and ivory and has a sweet china face. I finish the dressing with gold bows on the end of branches, I think it looks quite traditional

Although my tree is all white and silver, I do make a garland from fresh greenery for the mantelpiece, so I suppose that bit is traditional.

I would do one to twine in and out of the bannisters, but I think the cats would give it what for!

The tree gets smaller each year. I'm hoping for something less than six foot and no bitter words about holding it still left a bit right a bit no it's leaning too....as it crashes to the window again. I buy a memory for the tree each holiday starting from a star made by native Americans in 1976 and I've bought a tree decoration for each child. When they left home and had their own homes I gave them their" starter packs" of decorations and I try to give one decoration to each of the DGCs each year. So all in all our tree looks a glorious shambles.

Real tree about 7' decorated with clear, silver and blue. You can see it on the poinsettia thread

Traditional fake ! Gave up on the real tree when one of the dogs got a pine needle imbedded in his paw and it turned septic.

Ours is a memory tree too with pieces made by DDs, GDs and special pieces gathered over the years. I bought our GDs fast drying clay recently and GD2, age 4 has made an angel using a cutter, painting it red and covering it in glitter. Her first contribution.

I am sorry to say that the Christmas spirit left me in 2012 so I did not have a tree then nor will I this year but in the past it has always been a real tree, floor to ceiling, lovingly decorated traditionally and with children at the heart of all the activity and decorating ceremony. My job was the lights. Carols from Kings on Christmas eve was the time to start the build up to the big day, all guests were expected to have arrived by the start and the house would then be closed.
I still remember my son and daughter's faces when they crept down on Christmas morning full of anticipation and peeking around the lounge door - priceless! All father Christmas' presents were opened at whatever ungodly hour that happened to be and gifts between family were exchanged after the festive Lunch, timed to co-incide in time for the Queens speech. All very traditional and in the days before the dishwasher the men took charge of the washing up.
I still have all the decorations, lights - indoor & outdoor and countless other baubles and bangles which perhaps one day may be used again - I hope so.

An artificial one for me. It's years old and I cram it with baubles, tinsel and chocs. Every year I intend to get a new one (or a real one) and make it a bit more modern but my DGD loves my tree and all its rather old fashioned bits and bobs, most of which were gifts and I could never let go of.

A very small, fairly convincing, artificial tree, bought from Lakeland long ago. White starry lights, silver tinsel and baubles.

Real tree which we choose and chop ourselves. Decorated with baubles which we have collected over the years. House is paper decs and pompoms, lots of Christmas ornaments.

My artificial tree is so real it even sheds needles [honest!]. Trouble is it's too wide for the room, but I can't really justify buying a new one. I've just spent ages putting little plastic things on the lower branches to stop the wire catching on my new'ish curtains. Colours have to be red, green gold and silver and I'm hoping to find the white lights I mislaid last year. I can't stand blue or purple on a tree. Felt decorations that the children made years ago go on it, along with a few remaining baubles from when I was a child [how that gets to me when I take them out each year]. And each year I buy something new; this year it is silver bells from a National Trust shop. And tinsel; red and green, along with those red Victorian bead things. Is it just me, though, but it only seems like 5 minutes ago I was putting it away? I want the room to look really Christmassy as my daughter is having lots of building work done on her house and, apart from the tree her house isn't looking very festive.

At the moment I'd just settle for a tree! Scouts sell trees in the village but we were too late to get one (my fault - I forgot to order DH not happy) so we need to get one from somewhere else. Must have one as grandchildren are coming etc. Not a problem in itself but we only have one car - a smallish sports convertible. The only way we''l get a tree in is by having the roof down and me hanging on to it! Hope it stops raining tomorrow! If you see us driving past give us a wave!!!

Fake, after many years of real. I can't bear finding needles in October. And never finding one that is quite perfect, always having to trim bits off the sides and a big bare bit at the top. I think I might have suffered it a bit longer if we hadn't lost part of our excellent tree stand during a move.

Husband would have a heart attack at mention of a fake tree. He takes great care over choosing the specific variety too and the shape is of vital importance. Whatever he chooses I always just say it's lovely, because it always is. I have plain red and gold baubles, glass angels and Norwegian tin decorations with some other odd decorations accrued over the years and the tree looks pretty, always. This year we're going away and I haven't bothered at all. My Afghan boys are slightly spooked by Christmas decorations generally, so this year it's no hardship to give 'em a miss. (the decorations, not the boys that is.)