Black Friday and The Right Way to Decorate a Christmas Tree

Hello, friends.

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving weekend. I did.

I know it’s Cyber Monday now, and not Black Friday. I’m far more partial to Cyber Monday. It means I can sit at home in my pj’s and get deals on Christmas gifts. Some days I think that I might never get out of my pajamas if I didn’t have to. They’re just so comfy.

I’m not a big fan of the whole Black Friday thing. Maybe it’s because where I grew up there was no Black Friday. We knew of Black Saturday, but that’s a whole different thing. I remember when I was a kid, when we were here in the U.S., there were always after Thanksgiving sales, but I kind of feel like the whole thing has gotten out of hand. I mean, I really love shopping. And I love getting a good deal. But am I willing to risk life & limb over it? No thanks.

Plus, to me, Thanksgiving weekend is a time to celebrate our blessings and spend time with our loved ones. The Black Friday craze takes away from time with our families and friends, and drives us more and more to materialism, on the day after we’ve just given thanks for the things in life that really matter.

For us, the Friday after Thanksgiving is the day that we decorate our house for the Christmas season.

Christmas is by far my favorite holiday, and I just love this time of year. My family has always been a little crazy about Christmas. Well, my mom at least. My dad always said we couldn’t decorate the house until after his birthday, November 17th. These days I’m ok with waiting until after Thanksgiving, but as a kid I always wanted Christmas to last as long as possible.

In my house growing up, there were very strict rules about how to decorate the Christmas tree. I’m not going to tell you that you have to decorate your tree this way. Maybe you like a quaint, homey kind of tree, decorated with your kids’ homemade ornaments and a hodge podge of things that you’ve collected over the years. Maybe that’s your thing.

These are the rules for decorating a totally gorgeous tree like the ones you see in magazines. Feel free to disagree, but know that you’ll never change my mind.

1. Lights– you can never have too many lights. We have 1000 lights on our tree, and I would totally put more on if it weren’t so much work.

2. Only use white lights that don’t blink.

3. You should not be able to see a line of lights. They should look like they’re growing out of the tree branches themselves.

4. Pick a color palette, and keep it simple. Our tree has red, lime green, gold and bronze, and a little bit of purple. We have a few ornaments of different colors, but they’re minimal and have a similar feel.

5. My mom’s rule is that there must be 3 of each kind of ornament on the tree– not a bunch of single ornaments. I don’t follow this rule steadfastly, as I have a small number of single ornaments that are still within the proper color family and I don’t fault them for being loners. And most of my ornaments are in sets of at least 3, so it gives me some freedom for the few that aren’t. The overall idea, though, is to have some uniformity to your ornaments so your eye isn’t distracted by too much going on.

6. Larger ornaments go on the bottom of the tree and smaller ones at the top.

7. When placing ornaments on the tree, make sure that the same type or color of ornament are not right next to each other or in a “line” with each other. So make sure they’re staggered and on different parts of the tree.

8. We have a lot of ornaments on our tree. I like to put them on some of the inner branches to give depth to the tree. Ok, this isn’t really a rule, I just like the effect. But you can still get a totally gorgeous tree by just putting ornaments on the outer branches. This year we only have ornaments on the top half of the tree.. and the garland keeps getting messed up by little hands. Oh well. 🙂

9. Ornaments must hang freely and not rest on branches below them

10. The youngest member of the family puts the topper on the tree as the last thing.

We might be a little legalistic about our Christmas decor. But it’s just the right way to do it. 😉

Anybody else as insane about Christmas as we are?