A tree of your own

There is one thing you can be assured of when making a Christmas tree. It can be very, very easy to go cheesy. From afar they all look alike anyway: bows, balls, bells, lights, and sadomasochistic paraphernalia. Kidding. You know what I mean. It’s easy to have a Stepford tree and pretend you’re enjoying Christmas when what you really feel is broke, fat and tired. I’ve never trimmed my own tree. We are one of those really sad families who have professional decorators do it for them. Even our tree in the US is already decorated when we arrive from the airport. Looking back, it’s kind of scary.

It’s a very Pinoy thing – like noche buena – to have a fake tree. Unless you want to spring for more dough and buy one at Price Smart. We’ve taken fake to a whole new level. There are fire-engine red trees, ecru trees (very fight actually), white trees that are more like liquid paper and less like snow, and even designer wire trees. A new trend is also bunching up a couple of twigs and hanging balls on them, which for me is a sad thing.

For my first tree, I wanted to go white liquid paper tree (if I was going to fake it I didn’t want to go pretending otherwise). But when I started shopping for one at SM one busy holiday weekend, the sentimental side of me kicked in. Being a hopelessly romantic Pinoy I bought a fake Douglas Fir tree in forest green. The height was that of an Olsen twin – four feet. I would have easily gone for the ecru tree but it was too tall.

As I said earlier, it’s easy to make a tree look cheesy. One can over-decorate it or use predictable themes and those rave blinkers as Christmas lights. So you have to calm yourself down and figure out what you want.

Color

It doesn’t have to be traditional Christmas tones but there’s nothing wrong with those either. SM has all kinds of colors encouraging you to experiment with Christmas decor. They have violet, orange, gold, blue, yellow and, yes, pink which I chose. Have at least two base colors to keep it fun and resist the temptation of getting blinking, colored lights with music – it really is eerie.

Theme

Yes, there is life after Santa and his reindeer. I decided I wanted a Victorian theme, so I picked out some basic balls (prices vary from P119 to P200 for each set of balls from 16 little ones to six big ones). I picked out different sizes of pink and silver balls for texture. I also restrained myself from grabbing half a dozen flower decor, a dozen metallic sprigs, two packs of non-blinking white lights and a roll of the deadly ribbon. It’s easy to make your tree look like a transvestite because you can really get carried away at SM; it’s like a candy store! If you can’t help yourself, make two trees.

To add to the Victorian touch I went over to Firma and bought a dozen of their lovely velvet-covered cones and balls (in pink, of course) and half a dozen of their embellished frogs and swans for that fairy tale touch. I also added some silver bells from my old Christmas tree castoffs from Gumps. The result is a very gay Christmas tree!

Another motif may be cartoons. Buy charms at Greenhills they have Spongebob to Chicken Little there. And use yellow ribbons and let your inner child come out. If you’re the ultimate fashion victim then you can use last season’s Prada robots and leather charms on your tree and line on ecru tree with plum velvet ribbons! I wish I could have done that actually. A tree can also be manly – look for brushed steel balls and don’t put ribbons on a black spray-painted tree (just an idea). A rock n’ roll tree could mean laminated cutouts of your favorite albums and hang them with a bit of leather tinsel. Musical Christmas lights are yuck even for this theme. 

Since you have a fake tree, there is obviously no Christmas scent except for the smell of that big fat Christmas bonus you’re gonna get. Thank heavens there are Christmas oils from Body Shop. I bought Spiced Berry, Brandied Apple and Cranberry to alternate as holiday scents.

Aside from the tree, you have wreaths and candles to indulge in. Just make sure your house doesn’t end up looking like a lost forest in Fire Island aand you’ll be quite fine. On second thought, there’s nothing wrong with that at all.

So, here’s a sampling of some very personal trees, from one that’s decorated with anime toys to anothr in Russian motifs.