Christmas decorations

I remember when school term finished and we would bring home yards and yards of Christmas chains which had made. Now we have a tree at home and a few Christmas ornaments around the house.i do have a advent calander on my door in the hall when I worked in the school with young children we always put it up for them. One day I found it thrown out and took home for my gd. She is now 16 but still loves it.

I was born in 1940, and can still visualise the Christmas tree we had when I was a child. A green bottle brush type, about two feet high, with a collection of decorations collected at parties etc.....a silver shoe....a glass bird with feather tail...clunky coloured fairy lights with a Father Christmas controller light......and of course a fairy on top (not an angel)
It got very tatty before it was replaced when I was a teenager, but the excitement when it came out every year couldn't be bettered

I have an artificial garland across the mantelpiece and down each side which I bought from a very expensive shop. I couldn't really afford it but I loved it and still do. It is decorated with silk ribbons in gold and red. Apart from that, cards on ribbons on the wall and the tree which is always my pride and joy. The ornaments which go on last are the two little silver bells which were on my great grandmother's wedding cake in the 1880s. I think the family were quite prosperous then as they are solid silver, probably lost their money in the 1930s crash. She had 20 of them and they have been shared out as each one passed on but only through the female line. My sister doesn't have any children so my son will inherit four of them. My cousin sold hers which made me very cross - I would have bought them quite happily. My son is an organist in a large London Church so by the time he has got through Christingle, Midnight Communion, and two services on Christmas Day, he has lunch with one of the parishioners (they take it in turns each year) he drives back to Salisbury and crashes out in bed. They come up to us on Boxing Day but we do not have turkey as the children have already had a Christmas dinner at the other Grandma's house. We went down one year when it was freezing cold and had to drive back in the dark from Winchester to Devizes in icy condition - there was still ice on the inside of the car when we got home! Never again!

Lakeland were selling some of the old fashioned paper 'collapsible' decorations last year; I bought a little fir tree and it will be opened and put on display today. I do remember the bell shapes so well, the 'stick them yourself' chains - oh that glue - uggh! Also the Chinese lanterns that folded flat from top to bottom - thank you all for reviving those happy memories of childhood.

The only jarring note was that Lakeland described the decorations as 'one use only' or something similar; they clearly don't have any children of the fifties in their organisation - my little tree will survive many a Christmas I hope, stored folded flat and held in place with a paper clip. Wasteful lot!

The fairy for our tree, which (who?) I made when the children were small, 40 odd years ago, is a rather shabby now. I will try to smarten her up this year as I couldn't possibly replace her, she'd be hurt.

As a child and even a teenager,I would spend hours making decorations for Christmas.Recently,I found a paper chain kit online with pretty paper strips,so I bought some and my 7 year old grandson,his mom and me sat making them-it felt so cosy and nostalgic.The chains are proudly displayed and it was much more fun than buying the modern decorations.

I ave always felt that Christmas is for children, so have never had a "theme". the children run riot with our tree; an endeavour taken over by DGS now.
We used to only have crepe parer and tissue decorations, lovingly put away each year, disappointed that they were squashed and of full of beetles/cockroaches the following yea. [it was the tropics]. we started again!

We have a fibre optic tree in the bay window with gold and a few extra green baubles this year. The Nativity I have had for years and years is placed somewhere prominent (it changes year to year) and well lit and the mantlepiece hold my collection of Father Christmas figures the continental looking ones with wobbly legs dangling over. Some fresh flowers and a table centre made form greenery from the garden and a gold candle, a nice table runner I picked up in Maderia and that's it. Bordering on the tasteful and just missing it I should think!

i've got a red and gold theme for decorations - the more sparkle and bling the better!
foil red/gold garland around the lounge and dining room at ceiling height - plus the hall and a little "lobby" by the back door.
foil "fold out" bells and balls are in the conservatory too.
3 christmas trees loaded with lights, baubles and tinsel are now the expected thing.
daughter and 2 grandaughters live with me so they're able to scramble up the steps to do the garlands and the big tree is a shared job with another tree each for the grandaughters.
it's become a tradition to buy 2 new baubles every year - sometime soon i expect we'll have too many although, in my view, that may never happen.
i've got more boxes of decorations in the loft from when i was in my "multi colour" phase too.
do you get the impression that i love christmas and celebrate it as much as i can without forgetting the religious aspect of course which, to me, goes side by side with what we are celebrating.

I haven't been at home for Christmas for about 20 years, so have never bothered with more than the little tree I've had for many years and cards on display. And this year I'll be away again but DS2 is bringing two GSs here for a few days before Christmas so I will have to try to find some bits and pieces that will impress them.

We decorate the living room very simply with a bit of greenery from the garden. The tree, however is another matter. It has been likened to an explosion in a tinsel factory! Totally lacking in taste or style, it is covered in over 100 brightly coloured lights, lots of sparkly stuff and several decorations made by the DC when they were small.
I wouldn't want it any other way! ??

My DDIL only displays white and silver cards to match her tasteful white and silver decorations! Bright cards (including mine) are taped behind the door which is permanently pushed back against the wall! Presents wrapped by her are a decoration in themselves.I feel guilty spoiling them by opening! I love brightly coloured trees and lights and all the old baubles from years ago.

We keep the tree decorations simple and evocative of our family crafts: lots of white lights and masses of homemade decorations created when the kids were little, many by them, some by me. They include about 25 felt robins with sparkly black beads for eyes, chubby red tummies and brown felt wings, 10 felt Christmas puds? 10 felt Father Christmases, creamy white angels with wings( about 20 of those) glittering still despite their age. We used to make these during October half terms.

The most unusual additions were 10 little parakeets we made long ago, inspired by the parakeets we often see in our garden. These birds supposedly escaped during the filming of "African Queen" at a film studio not far from us decades ago and multiplied prolifically. We often see masses of them perched in our trees.

No tinsel for us!

I have various ornaments for the tree collected since I first got married, one or two are dating back about 75 years, small, beautiful hand painted baubles were given to me by my mother in law(she'd had them given to her by her father when she was only about 11). As a little girl I remember making paperchains with my brother, to decorate the living room. This year Dd1 and her 4 are living with me and I have told them they can a tree and the dining room to decorate. They are so excited and have been planning what to make and where to put things - all happening this weekend and even I am excited.....

Courtesy of China, I guess.

We have all become a lot more sophisticated with Christmas trimmings, from the days when money was tight and ornaments were costly(now you can buy a big box of various balls, boubles and bits from the pound shop or B&M for next to nothing).

Nearly all my Christmas decorations, house and tree, are at least, 20 years old some are 70 plus years old. To this I add free greenery from the garden and hedgerows and a tree. Even if I spent Christmas alone I would put all the usual decorations up; greenery, tree, and Christmas cards.

Sophisticated and stylish doesn't really do it for us. We prefer all the memories which are so precious.
When the DC were still at home we always decorated the house for Christmas with the same progression through the styles as others have already commented on. Now that we are on our own we don't do much more than put up the tree, which we have had for well over 40 years, with all the old decorations we have collected and inherited over the years and display the cards.
We still have loads of decorations boxed up in the loft so that we can use them if necessary but we will only do that if those who put them up are there, willing and able to put them all away again!

phoenix the DGD were making paper chains at a NT house and all the children hung them on the tree a la Victorian style!

Stainless steel snowflakes sound very up-market!

I have made little wrapped parcels to put in a rather tacky Father Christmas's sack, FC made by friend's DH and he has pride of place every year! FC, not friend's DH btw.

I have stainless steel snowflakes that hang from the light fittings and I have crystal Christmas trees that change colour.

I used Oxos a lot in the casseroles and mince we mostly used to eat in those days. I kept all the boxes and covered them with scraps of Christmas wrapping paper and hung them on the tree. There were more each year! I have them still, at least twenty of them, maybe thirty, and they still go on, along with the more sophisticated ornaments we bought since. The different wrapping paper is a record of past Christmasses.

The first Christmas we were married we lived in a flat with very high ceilings so I bought a huge tree, for which I couldn't afford to buy decorations. I got round this by gift wrapping any kind of small box I could get my hands on (including cigarette and match boxes ) and adorning my tree with these.

I still have some of them in the bottom of my decoration box although they don't make it onto the tree these days.

I too remember making paper chains, and the unfolding tissue bell and ball decorations, although must confess I wouldn't give them house room today!

I was chatting to GS the other day about the tree decorations we had when I was small. I told him that we could only afford a very few precious glass ones, and that the rest my mother and I made from pieces of egg trays covered in the coloured foils you got from sweets, so that they looked like little bells. She would make coloured pom poms too and tiny paper lanterns. And of course there were always chocolate decorations, so that you could have a "pick off the tree". It made for quite a jolly little tree but nothing like the gorgeous creations we see today (mine, I might add, cannot be graced with that description! It's a mish mash of the good, the bad and the downright ugly!!). I loved making paper chains too!

When we were first married we had the ball n bell shapes that opened out and were made of tissue type paper and you susspended them from the ceiling. We graduated to the foil type collapsible ones hanging from the ceiling. We don't hang anything now. We have a garland with lights on draped round the mantle piece, a couple of seasonal ornaments and the tree. The tree has a very eclectic mix of baubles, a couple of which are as old as me !