[PROCON]

I remember my dad telling me when he was 8 years old (circa 1920's), their candle-lit Christmas tree caught fire and his father had to throw it outside in the snow.

The worse Christmas he could remember...

I remember in the 50's and even the 60's, tinsel was big and we used to put a whole bunch on our Christmas trees.

When I had kids, it was a big thing to go out to a tree farm a cut down our Christmas tree; the kids loved it and it was a great Christmas tradition.

Nowadays, many people just get an artificial, pre-lit tree and store it in-between Christmases. :-(

[Sacajaweau]

Tinsel.....strand by strand

As time went on....we were tossing it...we were after that natural look.

Now my $20 fake tree makes me happy with its' one string of lights, 20 identical bulbs...and an old sheet.

Up and down time....20 minutes!!

At 71....I'm lucky to see a Christmas.

It's all about family and a lot of great food.

Just took date nut bread out of the oven.

[mountn man]

[The Great RJ]

I remember those aluminum foil trees in the 1960s. Because they were conductive you could not use conventional electric lights. They were illuminated by a spotlight with a rotating disk with three different color filters that caused the tree to change colors. My mother detested them and when our neighbors installed one in their picture windows she always said how tacky that looked. Ironically, we had a real long needled tree “flocked” with artificial snow and illuminated by the same color wheel spotlight.

[Kirkwood]

My Dad used to talk about lighting candles on the Christmas tree back in the 1920s and 30s. They would bring in several buckets of water, then quickly light them up and stand in awe for 5 minutes. I was watching the movie Holiday Inn yesterday and there was a tree with lighted candles.

I still have several strands of the old bubbler lights.

[Jeff Chandler]

Nowadays, many people just get an artificial, pre-lit tree

Some of the artificial trees look amazingly real, absolutely beautiful.

[CatherineofAragon]

I don't know if it's a regional thing, but to us, tinsel is the foil garland, and the silvery, shimmery strips we used to put on the branches were called icicles.

One year,when I was a kid, we found the cat scooting across the floor, trying to get an icicle out of his behind. He had ingested it and it wouldn't pass. That was the end of icicles on our Christmas tree.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

***I remember my dad telling me when he was 8 years old (circa 1920’s), their candle-lit Christmas tree caught fire and his father had to throw it outside in the snow.***

Even worse, near where my dad was born...Babbs Switch. They had moved to Branson Colorado or they would have been at that school house.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babbs_Switch_fire

I was near there not long ago looking for family graves in the Hobart cemetery. I was surprised to so see many graves with ALL THE SAME DATE OF DEATH, the date of the BABBS SWITCH FIRE!

[Ditter]

I got really tired of putting up a Christmas tree and then taking it down and putting all the ornaments away. So a few years ago I decided to do something different and then say good bye to the tradition.

I bought 5 Christmas trees of different sizes. I put them all into my dining room but the only decoration was a large spool of Christmas ribbon wound around them and connecting them together. I put down white sheets for snow underneath them and that was it.

It looked fantastic, my own grove of trees inside my house. That was my fair well to Christmas trees and I haven't had one since.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Used to be that if you had a tree you had two people on guard, one with sand and one with water.

Viva the pre-lit artificial Christmas tree!

[Katya]

I have small white electric lights but I still put candles on the tree... but I only get a tree right before Christmas eve and as long as its been cold outside, they are still very fresh. We emigrated to the US from Germany, and so growing up my mum always put candles on the tree, and yes, small twigs would sometimes catch on fire.... you have to be very mindful :)

[CARDINALRULES]

Back in the early 90’s they had the sets of lights that had multiple settings like chasing, twinkle, and slow fade. I think ours had 12.

I was sitting there looking at the wall behind the tree and the patterns the lights made. I got the roll of foil and tape and put it on the wall. Then I put the lights on the setting where it went through all of them. It was fun to change seats and try to find pictures.

We did that every year for a while but then the lights went missing during a move and it just doesn’t work as well with regular lights.

[mware]

Remember when Angel Hair was popular to put on the tree.

What were we thinking.

[Zionist Conspirator]

Actual lit candles are dangerous! That's just asking to lose one's home. That's certainly no way to celebrate.

I keep remembering an old segment/song from "Captain Kangaroo" where a toy rescues all the other toys from a house that caught fire from a candle-lit chrstmas tree. I think it was Herkimer, the Lonely Doll by Sterling Holloway. I really wish those old song segments from CK were available online somewhere.