Steve and Tipper at Granny Gazzie’s
“Course we didn’t have any electric lights, so our Christmas trees didn’t look like they do now. We were never allowed to use candles. They’re just so tricky. And Father, being in the fire-fighting business, wasn’t about to let us do that anyway. Aunt Louise provided ornaments, maybe sent some in packages to us, but we made a lot of them at home out of craft paper—mostly chains. Mother would bake gingerbread men. I remember very well a little sheep, a cookie cutout, that she made of gingerbread. We hung those on the tree. We made everything except for a few store-bought ornaments that Aunt Louise sent us. We’d make a star to go on top of the tree in school. Always before Christmas holidays, we were doing these things in school and bringing them home. I can remember when the first tin foil came out. We cut a star out cardboard and covered it in tin foil. It still makes a pretty star. That was the first one I remember. We used that star for years.”
Margaret Bulgin – “A Foxfire Christmas”
I’ve read many accounts of people saving every little scrap of foil to make Christmas ornaments. The inside of cigarette packs and gum wrappers are both mentioned.
When the girls were little they made several ornaments from foil gum wrappers. They molded the foil around a piece of cotton to form a ball of sorts. They were pretty on the tree. I still have a few of them.
I’m sure they got the idea from all the little foil cups I made them in church as a way to entertain them during preaching.
When I was very young I remember spending the night with one of my friends who lived near the church. It was during December and their tree was like nothing I had ever seen. It was pretty, but mostly I was impressed because it had candy all over it! There were little round balls of chocolate wrapped in foil just covering the tree. I was much too backward to ask for a piece, but was tickled to death when my friend’s mother let us and her younger brother pick a piece of candy off the tree to eat.
Last night’s video: Christmas Tricks, Traditions, & Deje Vu Makes the Girls Sick.
Tipper
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We also made the tinfoil star. We would go out in the woods and pick certain things up and wrap them in tinfoil and them on a cedar tree. We’d made paper changes and go around the tree. We enjoyed it so much.
I’m very curious about the foil cups you were making in church!
Quinn-I shaped the foil around my thumb and then twisted the end making a tiny cup 🙂
Your mom and Granny and Granny G all got to enjoy a real life BABY DOLL that Christmas. Tipper, what a beauty then and now with those dark eyes. You shine without electricity or tin foil!
We didn’t have lights when I was little. Well yes we did but ours were kerosene and they definately didn’t work well on a Christmas tree. Our tree, when we had one, was decorated totally with what we could make at home. Popcorn rope and cotton snow is about all I can remember. Maybe an occasional candy cane or star cut from notebook paper and colored at school with the help of our teachers.
Our parents taught us that Christ’s birth probably wasn’t on December 25th and should be celebrated every hour of every day instead of once a year. I learned that Santa Claus wasn’t real before I started school so never expected anything from an elf.
I don’t feel at all deprived. Maybe a little then not in any way now. I experienced something that the masses didn’t. I’m proud of my upbringing. Feel sorry for me if you must, that’s your right I guess, but I don’t!
PS: People came to our house to find a Christmas tree. We gave them away for free. Daddy told them what not to cut and turned them loose. When’s the last time you saw something like that?
This is not directed at you Tipper!
The first star topper on my tree was a tinfoil-covered cardboard cutout since we were poor college students who couldn’t afford to buy one. My grandmother (same one who sneakily opened her gift) gave me some of her beautiful old ornaments. My favorites were little tinfoil snowflakes and bells that folded out. They became so fragile that we stopped unfolding them before they fell apart. I still have one left.
I can so vividly remember being in elementary school and the excitement of making the ornaments for our class Christmas tree. Someone’s father would always bring in a real tree and put the lights on it for our teacher and all us classmates would start cutting construction paper ornaments. Each student would bring in ornament from home. I like to think that our decorations would have been even better with the craft materials we have available today. Because we love in a low population county with a very small school system, my two kids, who were four years apart, most always had the same teachers when they were in primary and elementary school. Most of the time, their teachers had a signature ornament their students made every year that they would be allowed to bring home on the last day of school before Christmas break. Their third grade teacher made a picture of each student that would be made into an ornament. They took a mason jar lid assembly and wrapped the ring of the lid in Christmas red and green yarn, then they cut out a round picture from the print of their picture the teacher had made to glue into the lid and then into the ring covered with the yarn. They backed the lid with red or green felt so that the ornament would be pretty from both sides. They each wrote their name on the felt. This was back in the late 80’s and early 90’s and to this day these two ornaments always hang on our Christmas tree every year. They also made Christmas cards every year to bring home to their parents—somewhere I have a box full of various art projects they made at school every year—all such sweet keepsakes.
Beautiful memories & stories from everyone. Thank you all for sharing . I also remember making foil stars as a child and also with my own children. I also remember the “color wheels “ that would shine colors on the tree 🙂 So fun 🙂
Love. Period. That’s Christmas, however expressed. When we touch it, or are touched by it, it runs through us like electricity. For some, as Randy said, it shows up as tears. What a wonderful way to say, “Thank you so much” without words and much more powerfully.
In addition to the many homemade ornaments our son made, another one we treasure is the first year we were married we bought a little wreath ornament. That was forty-eight years ago, and it came from a dime store, but it means so much to us. A few years ago, our son was in a store, and he found a Santa holding a wreath almost identical to the one we have on the tree, and he bought it and gave it to us for Christmas that year. I keep that in my curio cabinet and enjoy it all year long.
We like to make ornaments out of air dry clay and we also slice oranges and dry them, then tie some twine around. The kids really love to hang candy canes on the tree and of course every year there are the paper ornaments that get made. I get a little swoon every time you show grannie’s little crocheted popcorn and red bead garland. I need my little crocheter to make some popcorn balls now for next Christmas!
We had a tree just like Granny Gazzie’s and it was the same size! Of course, you couldn’t put lights on those aluminum trees. I have a pre-lit artificial tree.
The first Cristmas trees I remember had no electric lights. They had tinsel, glass ornaments, and the paper chains, strung popcorn and multicolored construction paper cutouts familiar to most of us. Electric bulbs–red, white, blue, orange, green–came later. One Christmas keepsake my mother preserved was not an ornament but a cedar boxwith its heavy cardboard mailing container. It was postmarked in 1927 and contained candied fruit from California, sent by her aunt in Kansas to mom and her siblings in Salem, SC, when she was 15. Mom kept family pictures in the box, which I now have, still in its shipping container.
Gene-what a treasure! So glad you still have it 🙂
My favorite ornaments are ones my grandfather gave my parents when they were newly married. Grandpa was a trash collector and always brought home some neat gifts!
Teresa, your comment about your Grandpa bringing home neat things he had picked up in the trash sounds like me. When I would take our trash to the landfill, I would often come back with something I had picked up. My wife would tell me you come back with more than you took! I once brought a perfectly good push mower home that only needed a 10 cent bolt in the handle. When I see some of the things being thrown away, I say the owners of it didn’t have to work as hard for their money as I have had to work for mine. They will no longer allow you to pick up things but sometimes the attendants will turn their head and pretend to not see you pick something up.
Good morning everyone and Merry Christmas. When my oldest son was only 2 years old, now he is 45. Our tree had hollow chocolate balls hung on it. I would stand back and check if they were all spaced right. One day I looked at the balls and they looked off. When I went up close, I saw that all the lower ones had been bit off on the bottom. It was the funniest thing. I don’t remember if I took them off or left them up. I think all my holiday memories were never what you would call perfect. But they were always fun. Have a great Holiday and New Years. Hug Granny for me. Anna from Arkansas.
Anna-what a great memory!
Anna, our children doing things like that is what makes it so much fun. I remember when our daughter “April” was about two years old climbing into a cardboard box and playing with a camera flashbulb cube and not playing with her Christmas toys. Money can not buy these type of memories. Give Tipper’s grandsons a little more time and she will be writing about that mischief they are getting into!
Those home made ornaments are priceless! I remember when I was little, our neighbors high school age son made a manager out of paper mache and sticks. It was very rustic looking but probably more accurate than the fancy porcelain ones of today.
By the way, I made ham the Miss Cindy way and my family loved it! So easy but so delicious!
I remember making paper chains for our Christmas trees growing up. My dad and brother always went into the woods and cut down a small tree each year. They were not perfect, and sometimes, very scraggly—but they always turned out to be the most beautiful tree after we decorated it. We had a few store bought bulbs and we would make some ornaments out of old Christmas cards and such. Mama always put on icicles. She did that part herself because she liked to put one at a time on each limb, and us kids would just toss them on willy nilly. We did always have lights on the tree. I remember because each Christmas morning, we would peek in the living room to see if Santa had come. The tree would be lit up in the corner of the dark room with our gift sitting under for us to find. They were never wrapped. My most memorable morning, there was a little table with two chairs and each chair had a doll sitting on it for my sister and I. It looked magical to me and I can still see it in my mind. That was before my little brother and sister were born.
I remember making paper chains from strips of construction paper in school. And a friend showed me how to fold the foil gum wrappers and link them together to form chain of sorts.
Loved the ornament story. Some of my ornaments are the ones my son made in preschool.He went to a Presbyterian preschool and they made lovely ornaments. I have a special box for then as they are mostly paper. My son is 35.
Oh gosh, you have brought a beautiful memory with that picture. At some point we had a revolving wheel that a light shone thru to give the tree different colors. Thanks for sharing yours. Prayers for Granny and God’s Blessing on you and yours.
Going down memory lane.
I still have a tin foil star, my mama made.
We didn’t have a lot of material things.
Mama and daddy made sure we were fed and loved.
I am so thankful.
Hope you all had a great Christmas.
This brought back memories of momma talking about saving gum wrapper foil to cover sycamore balls to make ornaments. They didn’t have gifts and they didn’t always have a tree, but when they cut a branch they would try to decorate it. Momma made Christmas so special for us younguns, not because of gifts, but by so many other things. I miss her and Daddy so.
My cousin that I asked prayer for a few weeks ago went home to the Lord yesterday. She only found out about 8 weeks ago anything was wrong. Please pray for her family. Thank you all!
God bless!
Debbie-I’m sorry. I will pray for your family.
I remember when I would make Christmas ornaments in both church and school, later on my children and grandsons did the same thing. I have not watched the video and don’t know if this would be considered a trick or gag gift, but one year when my now deceased daughter was about 10 -12 years old, I put a brick in a large box along with some gravel that would rattle and wrapped it up for her and put it under the tree. I had wrote fragile, do not shake on the present. She would look at it and pick it it up, but be very careful in handling it. If the gravel made any noise I would tell her she had broke it. I would give anything to hear her say Daddy and see the look on her face again when she opened it.
I have wrote about how depressed I am at Christmas thinking of the memories and now trying to go on living without my wife, daughter and so many other loved ones in both mine and my wife’s family. I would like to tell about the blessing I had this year. My nephew and his wife are unable to have children of their own and now are fostering a family of 4 brothers and sisters in age from about 10 to 17 years old. I know nothing about their past but I know they have now had one joyful, happy Christmas. The nephew’s family covered these children with presents and love. Seeing their joy and difference the love they have been getting from all of us since living with them and the rest of us and the difference it has and is making in their lives is a blessing. It is one of the best gifts I could have received. His wife cried when she was thanking us for doing this.
It evidently made a difference in you also. That’s what love does – whether given, received or observed.
Aww Randy, that really is the spirit of Christmas. Brought tears to my eyes. Bless you and your family.