O Christmas Tree

Back in December 2005 I mentioned two very interesting books by Robert Brenner, CHRISTMAS, 1940-1959: A COLLECTOR'S GUIDE TO DECORATIONS AND CUSTOMS (subject link) and CHRISTMAS, 1960-PRESENT: A COLLECTOR'S GUIDE TO DECORATIONS AND CUSTOMS.

These books are great fun to pull off the shelves at this time of year. As I wrote then, the books "each contain hundreds of photographs of everything from record album covers to cardboard manger sets to Christmas ornaments and candles. It was fun to recognize some items handed down from my grandparents (such as the aforementioned cardboard manger set) among the pages."

The books come to mind as we've been busy setting up and decorating our tree over the last couple days. While in the past we have always had Monterey pines for our trees, the quality of the trees from the tree farm we have long used really declined over the last few years. They were weak and ended up looking terribly misshapen when decorated. This year we took the plunge and got a Noble fir instead -- from a Home Depot, no less. So far, so good, although I miss the pine smell which says "Christmas"!

My youngest daughter and I are going to set up a separate tabletop "Barbie" tree again this year. It's possible in the future we might even set up a little "Disney" tree as well, as our collection seems to keep growing year by year!

We bought an ornament for our college daughter who comes home next week:


Fight on, and Merry Christmas!