Today’s post is brought to you by Tales From the Dad Side. SciFi Dad posted random facts about his Christmas tree with the premise that he has “always found that a family’s Christmas tree can tell a story, or many stories”. I couldn’t agree more, so let’s see what my tree says, shall we?

• Our tree was a $35 WalMart special, an artificial 6.5″ with pre-lit multi-colored lights. Cheap and traditional!
• The first round of “base” ornaments — the ones that were bought purely for decorative purposes — are somewhat retro and old-fashioned, all red, green and white in color. IKEA was a great place for these. Cheap and traditional!
• I had a very specific idea for our tree topper and managed to find it at WalMart: a scrolly lighted star. Cheap and traditional!
• The top third of our tree contains most of my husband’s Star Trek ornaments. (He’s 6′4″ so they somehow never migrated south.) He has virtually every one ever available for purchase. I completely shattered one of the pre-lit bulbs in an attempt to plug-in one of the many light-up, talking Star Trek ornaments.
• The inner branches contain five very special glass ornaments, each painted with a year from 2004 through 2008. My mother-in-law has made an ornament for every Christmas my husband and I have spent together, including the pre-marriage days; none are alike, varying in shape, size and color, and they’re certainly nothing fancy but they’re important. We’re waiting on our 2009 ornament.
• I’m a fiend about buying commemorative ornaments. On top of my MIL’s ornaments, I buy at least one ornament with the year emblazoned on it somewhere.  This year, we bought one to celebrate our first house and, in light of having my own Christmas tree for the first time ever, I started my first official Hallmark collection: a new series they started just this year, Sweet Treats.
• There is absolutely no tinsel on our tree.
• We do, however, have shiny red and green Christmas beads and this weird white fuzzy garland.
• In order to keep our tree from looking rather sparse, we populated it with a ton of ornaments from my MIL, most of which are from my husband’s childhood — memorable, homemade, special ones from family. My childhood ornaments are on the way from my mom’s house.

So, in essence, we’re cheap, traditional and sentimental.

Yep, that sounds about right.

Filed under: holidays