Top 10 Tips to Decorating the Perfect Christmas Tree

1. Placement of your tree.
Determining your tree placement is the beginning of the process. Many people believe a cornered tree is appropriate. I completely disagree. A Christmas tree is a centerpiece. From it comes the joy of Christmas morning. A group does not gather round a corner of a room. The only reason I can see putting a tree in a corner is laziness. Most people’s den has a nook or corner that is free of furniture. Therefore, there is no need to move around furniture. To put a tree in the middle of your family room usually means you will have to move around furniture. Is Christmas not worth that small extra effort? As an added bonus, by moving your furniture, you will get a new perspective on your room when seated and be able to clean areas that have been inaccessible for months or years.

2. Choosing your tree
Real vs. fake is an argument as old as time. Many friendships have been ended and wars begun as advocates of each camp are irrationally encamped. You think the Political Board is bad; just walk into an argument between real and fake tree advocates and you will yearn for the halcyon confines of Political Talk.

I am actually an artificial convert. My conversion was purely an economical one. I couldn’t afford the high price of real trees. $80 each year was no longer justifiable. Sure, I don’t mind spending that on a Christopher Radko ornament, but it is a timeless piece of art. A tree, on the other hand, dies and is a fire hazard. On a plus note with the artificial, I no longer have a persistent cold during December. Come to find out, I am allergic to living fir trees. Beside being economical and easy on the allergic, artificial trees are not the fire hazards that real ones are, nor do they require the frequent watering. Plus they are symmetric in ways that real ones never are. On the negative end of things, artificials require storage, encourage the growth of the Chinese economy as all artificials are now made in China, and they are fake, thus have no natural smell or feel.

My final argument for those insisting live is the only way to go: live ones are only available for purchase in late November onward. Let’s say you’re like I am and you want to decorate on All Saints’ Day. You’re not going to be able to do that with a real tree unless you cut down one yourself.

3. Choosing your tree stand
Simone Weil writes in her seminal work, The Need for Roots, “To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.” Without an anchor in the soils of life, we are simply like dust and blow whichever way the wind of want, desire, and fortune blows. We very much need roots, and the lack of roots is indeed a source of much sadness, despair, and ultimately, depression and death. God gave humans bodies for this very reason. To root us into the physical world as a reminder that we are not just spirit. A tree has a much more literal need for roots: the very source of their being and sustenance is its roots.

Once a tree is no longer rooted to the soils which gave rise to its height, a tree will naturally fall. Unlike the human fall in the Garden of Eden, this fall is due entirely to the physical laws which were instituted at creation. A proper stand, worthy of lifting high the tree, the very centerpiece of your indoor Christmas decorations, is essential. A poorly made or flimsy tree stand can ruin your tree. We saw with the Hard Rock collapse exactly what happens when you do not build with the correct support. Once our tree fell over and we lost thousands of dollars in ornaments. A firm metal like iron is best and the stand should weigh at least 15 pounds. If it won’t break your foot if dropped on your foot, the stand is inadequate.

4. Choosing your lights.
My rule of thumb is 200 lights for every foot of height. Most designers I’ve talked to about this have argued that 100 lights for every foot is the maximum. Ignore them. There’s a reason they’re designers and not artists. Christmas is the season we celebrate “the true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.” (John 1) Lights are never excessive on a Christmas tree. The only question you should ask yourself is white or colored?

I like the classic white look, but I am never going to look down on someone with colored lights. There is a time and place for the celebratory, polychromatic lighted trees and I can appreciate them fully. Mixing color and white lights actually can also work well. The key is to use plenty of lights. Do not skimp. This is especially true with outdoor tree lighting, as you can read in my post How To Decorate an Outdoor Tree, which contains in it the most precise and essential instructions ever printed on appropriately decorating an outdoor tree.

As for a lighting scheme, I recommend constant on setting. Lights these days have up to eight settings, from quick flash to slow twinkle. I again am a traditionalist and want a steady beam of light, for Jesus does not shine and dim. Jesus shines constantly with the beam of perfect love. When Martin Luther lit those first candles in his tree, do you think he wanted his candle flickering? Nein! Neither should you let your lights flicker or dim.

5. Choosing a tree skirt.
In our house, we have a large bear skin tree skirt from a grizzly bear my grandfather killed in the Yukon before that was illegal. As a child, I let its warm, soft bristles rub against my face as I imagined it sitting next to a stream in wait of the next large salmon to haplessly swim by and become lunch. That one time when our dog, Rex, urinated on the fur, my father became so apoplectic I hid Rex at a neighbor’s for over a week.

If you cannot get a dead animal skin to skirt your tree, the classiest option in my opinion is a homemade skirt. The themes of a homemade skirt are unlimited, but the ones I have found are most beautiful have a religious theme -- usually a manger scene. Artificial, fuzzy skirts are all the rage now. They are okay, and if you must, the best of this sort is made by Trimsetters by Dillard’s.

This post was edited on 11/21/19 at 10:47 am