Christmas Decorations

This is my Christmas tree decorated in pink. I put it in my living-room.

I have been collecting pink vintage ornaments for quite awhile, but lately it has been hard to find them. So I made my own pink ornaments. I bought clear ornaments and poured pink, white and gold acrylic paint into the ornament. Then I poured out the excess. I love my pink ornaments.

I love this ornamet.

I used a spray can of snow to decorate my tree, but I did't like the result. It looks more like frost, I wanted a flocked look. Next year I will try something else to accomplish a flocked look.

My little living-room ready for Christmas.

My Christmas tree in the family-room, simply traditional.

12 years ago, I started my ornament collection with this little rabbit.

Nutcracker, love it.

My Christmas tree in the kitchen window.

New little bird creations.

This is my darling sister Mary's Christmas tree. She did a beautiful job and I wanted to share it with you all. She is a really cretive lady with many talents. Thank you Mary.

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The tradition of the tree: "Long before the spread of Christianity, pagans clung firmly to the belief that the forests would turn green in spring only if people paid homage to the evergreen throughout the winter. Evergreens, they were convinced, contained mystical powers that enabled the tree to stay green year-around. Unable to persuade the people of northern Europe otherwise, Christian missionaries adopted the practice of bringing evergreens indoors in winter. " The fact that December 25 was chosen [to celebrate Christ's birth]," explains historian Francis Weismer," does not seem to rest so much on historical findings as in the desire to replace the popular pagan celebration of the winter solstice by the festivities of a truly christian holiday" Among the most popular of the early Christian ceremonies were plays written by the clergy and performed on church steps to teach townspeople the bible. One of the most popular of these plays was the story of Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit. Since fruit trees were barren in the North at Christmastime, the actors represented the tree of paradise in the garden of Eden by tying apples, representing Original sin, to evergreen boughs. The custom of decorating evergreens with apples, and as time progressed, with candles, flowers, religious ornaments, and candy and cookies, grew into a Christmas tradition in Germany in the 1500s. In England, putting up a tree was a privilege reserved for royalty from the time of their introduction to the century around 1700 until the mid-19th centuty, when the German-born Prince Albert (1819-1861) gained Queen Victoria's permission for her subjects to display and decorate evergreens in their homes. In America, early German settlers carried on their homeland tradition of decorating evergreens for Christmas... Before evergreen trees were planted and harvested as cash crops, forests were ravaged in a rush to gather trees for Christmas. As a result, Theodore Roosevelt- the first American president seriously concerned with the conservation of our natural resource encouraged  the use of artificial trees...While neither as full nor as realistic as today's artificial trees, these older models are eagerly sought by collectors of Christmas ornaments as a means of displaying antique decorations." Took it from: Country Living 1995 Magazine. "Antiques Across America".