Christmas Trees Used to be Ugly

I spend about 70 bucks on my christmas tree every year, choosing what I think is the prized selection among the locally delivered Douglas Firs. Generally I choose a slender tree with soft bristles about 8 or nine feet tall. I love the way my tree looks, and to me, its the ideal American style for a Christmas tree. But trees didn’t always look this way. Below are some pics cribbed from my favorite photo site, Shorpy, along with comments about how trees assumed their present form:

This is more than a Christmas tree. This is Christmas tree as art installation.

I love the fact that it nearly takes over the room and that there is room to breathe between the branches that allows the ornaments and ropes of glass balls to be draped and displayed in all their glory.

This is the kind of tree my grandparents always had–very big and wide and decorated with the exact same ornaments. The only thing missing is Angel Hair (was it actually fiber glass?). My grandmother went through a big angel hair period before she moved on to tinsel.

I’ve observed that in old photos of plain and poorly shaped women as well as poorly shaped Christmas trees, many viewers raise the subject of appearance. We had trees like this when I was young, usually because Dad always got one that was way too tall and we had to cut off to fit it in the room. We had one as recently as about 20 years ago that looked like a giant tumbleweed, rather shapeless and sparse.

Wow. It never ceases to amaze me how different Christmas trees looked back in the day. I don’t mean the decorations, I mean the actual shape of the tree.

Is it because they were just chopped from somewhere by the homeowners? Or maybe there is a species that has been developed for mass consumption today?

That’s a big effin’ tree.