Do you remember Christmas tree tinsel?

I miss the old plastic lighted decorations like these. I loved these as a child.

I like cheerful looking, hodge-podge Christmas trees with ornaments that have meaning. Tinsel adds to that.

Way to fucking messy. Tried tinsel one year and then vowed never again

It was too difficult to remove, so after Xmas, people just dragged their tinsel-laden trees to the curb, and the tinsel just looked so fuckin' sad outside in the cold light of day.

As a kid, I thought it is incredibly funny to see the cat walking around with tinsel hanging out of his ass. As an adult I can see how a cat eating tinsel could well be fatal, but as a kid this was funny.

Two things I really miss about Christmas: one, those ornaments with the liquid in them that would bubble after the bulbs warmed up, and two, I miss the big, 2-1/2 inch colored lights that were so damn hot you'd get 2nd degree burns from touching. Sure, they consumed tons of electricity, and sure, they actually were a fire hazard, but their glow was warm and merry...not anemic and sterile like the LEDs we have today.

Too messy. Tried them once.

My parents still use tinsel. I like it, but I don't put it on my tree because it's artificial.

That's lametta, OP. This is tinsel.

No, that is garland. Tinsel is in the OP.

My mom would insist the tinsel be placed on the tree one strand at a time. I wanted to just throw it at the tree by the hand full.

To compost and recycle your tree you have to get it all off and that's really hard to do, so people don't buy it anymore.

[quote] I miss the big, 2-1/2 inch colored lights that were so damn hot you'd get 2nd degree burns from touching. Sure, they consumed tons of electricity, and sure, they actually were a fire hazard, but their glow was warm and merry...not anemic and sterile like the LEDs we have today.

Those big old lights were dipped in paint, and that's why they had a warm glow to them. I remember the paint scratching off of a few of my mother's old lights.

I always wanted my middle name to be "Tinsel".

One of the best things about the movie Black Christmas is the glow of the Christmas lights. It gives the movie such nostalgic warmth. The red-lighted wreath on the front door is one of my favorite movie props of all time.

I always thought it was eerie the way the Christmas tree was wrapped in that cotton batting.

I just love the standing lamp in OP's picture.

Your Christmas tree will look the best if Dudley the angel hangs the tinsel.

Nothing says Christmas like sifting tinsel-woven cat poop out of the litter box!

YES! Tinsel and these kind of ornaments.

Trees without tinsel look cheap and boring. And no plastic ornaments, ugh. And the good lights!

Colored lights that blink make the tree, not tinsel.

Isn't tinsel dangerous or something? Where am I getting that idea?

Let's see; sharp metal strands probably with lead in them? Hmmm....

My "old-school" stepdad used to get drunk and go crazy with that spray-on snow-flock shit. A beautifully-decorated tree, ruined in seconds.

Tinsel isn't sharp!

Yeah, we had designer Christmas trees because my mom was that way already and I always wanted a "real" Christmas tree with tinsel. When I say 'wanted' I mean with the impassioned, unflagging desire of childhood.

My cousins always had tinsel. The tomboy cousin would throw it on in handfuls, while my goody-goody Melissa Sue Anderson cousin would hang it one...tiny...strand at a time, with a lot of backing up and assessing the effect before hanging the next little strand.

I remember my first artificial tree. I sat there staring at it, thankful that the sap would no longer be a problem but wondering if I would get cut sitting on it.

As I was saying....

My mom really loved Christmas and went all-out with the decorations, mostly things she'd made herself, like a macaroni Christmas tree spray-painted gold, done just right. With tinsel, she placed each of the many strands very carefully amidst all of the ornaments she'd lovingly curated. (No two were alike and she abhorred red and green balls). She wasn't overly frugal, but when the tree came down after New Years, she'd take the tinsel off very carefully, put it back in its box, and SAVE IT UNTIL NEXT YEAR with the rest of the decorations.

My brother and I didn't know any better; we thought that was normal behavior.

The old kind had lead in it, OP. They still make it but it's mylar or some other plastic and doesn't hang the same. Also it gets statically charged in dry weather.

Yes, they phased out the old, lead-based tinsel in the 1960s. When my family realized it was happening, we started doing what R28's family did -- saving it from year to year. I bought some about 20 years ago from a place that stocked Germany Christmas decorations.

When I was a kid, we used to have a second tree that was aluminum. And I recall hanging blue tinsel (the plastic kind) on that -- one strand at a time.

I loved bubble lights. We didn't have them, but our neighbor did. And, yes, the old lights had such a warm glow to them. The lights that we strung around the house were the same kind, only larger. My father would pick what seemed like the coldest day of the late fall to put those lights up.

This great gallery of old-timey pictures of classy ladies in front of tacky trees has been making the rounds -- it seems especially Dataloungey

LOOK AT THIS DRUNK

I still put tinsel on my tree but it's gotten tougher and tougher to find every year. Supposedly you can't recycle the tree with tinsel on it? I don't care, a Christmas tree needs to be somewhat gaudy and tacky to be correct

When we used it, it was called "Icicles" on the box. My family wanted to just put groups of them on the tree and then spread them out, but I preferred to do them one-by-one, carefully hanging each one to make sure it hung straight down and was not interrupted by another branch below it....

I still put tinsel on my artificial tree. I managed to find both gold and silver tinsel and I save it in a box. It's nice to see when the tree lights are on and the house lights are low. Gives the tree that extra soft sparkle.

This one had a classic tree my mother never would have allowed:

When I decorated my grandmother's tree back in the day the tinsel was metallic almost like aluminum foil. As time went on it became more like shiny plastic strands. We haven't used tinsel in many years and I kinda miss it.

I've always thought that Tinsel Garland would be a great name for a Christmas drag queen.

I loved it.

And, yes r17, seeing the tinsel in the litter box was always a special treat.

I wanted tinsel and begged for it every year, but my mother would say "Oh that's so trashy looking! It's the kind of thing Edna has on her tree!" - Edna being her great rival in All Things Domestic. Edna's tree was always a carnival-like conglomeration of colors and lights and miles of fluffy while garland with little red rosebud lights all along it. I thought that was gorgeous and magical. Our tree was flocked with white fake snow and decorated ONLY in green and blue ornaments.

It makes me sad to think that all of these people are dead and rotting in their graves now.

Oh! Merry Christmas everybody!

I love the gaudy tinsel draped Christmas trees of my childhood but I also love seeing photos of those almost stark and abstract silver aluminium trees from the 50's and 60's with their one lone ornament at the end of each branch. Can you find replicas of those aluminium trees anywhere?

I think at least a couple of the pictures in R31 are not real women.

I always loved the Christmas tree in "Christmas in Connecticut."

I've always loved the huge tree in "The Man Who Came to Dinner."

Lots and lots of tinsel.

I guess white Christmas trees were a thing in the 50's and 60's? I do miss putting all that crap on the Chrstmas tree

Tinsel is trashy.

Thank you for posting that r31!

Say it ain't so r43.

R34 Yes I remember then being called icicles. It even said so on the box.

Fuck tinsel garland, paper chains were the shit back in the day

I used to eat it. Between that and our Fiestaware, I'm surprised my toe can't write like a pencil. So much lead.

Did anyone use to make cranberry and popcorn strings to wrap around the tree instead of garland? I loved doing that as a kid.

Like so:

We tried it one year, r51, but gave up because the popcorn broke every time we tried to needle through it.

The silvery tinsel/icicles reflect the colors and make the tree seem like it has more lights on it that it actually has.

Who puts tinsel on strand by strand? The best and most fun part of using tinsel is running around the tree and throwing it on in batches. Loved doing that!

The good old-skool tinsel is impossible to find. Not the ancient lead tinsel, but the tinsel of the 60s/70s/80s.

At some point (in the 90s, maybe?) that stuff all disappeared and was replaced by the current stuff, which is super-narrow mylar fettuccine strands which is JUST NOT THE SAME. It looks almost the same, but doesn't hang the same, and it particularly doesn't feel the same.

The old stuff felt (and [bold]was[/bold]) so delicate...like a wwhhhissper.... (MERRY!)

The key to popcorn strings is the needle has to go through the actual kernel head. Doofus. I loved tinsel and it made our homespun Christmas trees look great. Trying to recreate this look (I am retro) I bought actual vintage metal tinsel off eBay last year, but it wasn't the same. Now I like a really lovely and bare Frasier fir I can tuck shiny balls into close to the trunk. I've decided the tree should be the centerpiece, and it works. But it has to be a real tree.

Remember those three horrible turn-of-the-century Christmases when "designers" decided it was tasteful to have those awful super-wide, pre-wired grosgrain sateen ribbons which ran not around, but UP the side of the tree.

Awful and frau-riffic.

I'll bet a sizable number of you old dames still do that. Stop it. It was NEVER elegant.

Didn't Elvis have a daughter named Tinsel Marie? She was in Plan 9 from Outer Space.

I was surprised to see that they're still selling angel hair. I always wanted it as a kid but it was forbidden because it was fiberglass. One of my earliest memories is of her sitting in the garage using turpentine to strip the color from small colored bulbs before white was widely available.

No colored bulbs

No fiberglass

No big bulbs

No tinsel

No fun

Tara Lipinski is still using the stuff.

My mother never bought any, but we did have just about everything else mentioned here covering the tree. I looooved bubble lights...my grandma had some vintage ones that looked really different from the standard kind you could buy in the '80s.

Why is the title of the thread "Do you remember..." as if tinsel is gone? They sell it in stores every Christmas.

Grew up with tinsel in the tree and garlands so you know i am old 😊

didn't they used to put real candles in Xmas trees?

Yes they did R64, they were attached by clamps that clipped onto the tree branches.

We hope everyone uses a living tree and then plants it in the backyard after!

I wanted to get one of those little potted trees this year but I couldn't find one.

My father grew up in Minnesota, his parents having immigrated from Sweden. He told me that once when he was a boy their Xmas tree with real candles caught fire and his father grabbed it and threw it out in the snow. Merry Christmas.

Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree...

...I see your steady branches

I head that green Christmas trees are for normal people and aluminium ones are for gays.

R40: I feel you. Mom decorated in *fruit, birds and white lights* only one year, but we also had the blue/green-only color scheme. (No red! Red is trashy! No icicles! They are a mess!!) what says Christmas like fake bananas, pears, and oranges on a tree?

R51: Eventually my begging paid off (together with encroaching middle-aged parental ennui) and I got a real tree one year - you bet I did the popcorn and cranberry strands made with clear, plastic nylon thread. Ouch. Thimble or accuracy/speed? You decide.

I have reusable tinsel. I bought them when they first came out, so they are thin and bright. They're not chunky dark spiral tin like the more recent reusable tinsel.

I go for gaudy for Christmas because that's what my parents and grandparents did. There was no theme to their Christmas trees. Just a lot of different color glass ornaments (Shiny Brite brand), colored lights, tinsel and my grandmother would make a knitted ornament every year.. My dad used the heavy lead tinsel and reused it every year.

I still have some of the knitted ornaments my grandmother and my late aunt made. I also have Shiny Bright indents, tear drops, tornadoes and glitter "flocked" ornaments. Every year one breaks, so this year I went online to find a store that sells replacements. Well, there's no such store. Everything is big shatterproof balls and long diamond shaped ornaments now, and they are sold in round plastic bins with matching colors.

I went to ebay and holy shit! I can't believe what people are asking for old ornaments. I used to go to Harrow's after Christmas and get those ornaments for 75% off, so a whole box of them cost me $2 or $3.

Someone is asking $115 for those cheap looking clip-on bird ornaments with the white straw tails that keep falling out.

I know that Radko guy makes retro ornaments but they are all pastel matcha-match colors and I'm not into that.

Sorry. Matchy match

I also miss Angel Hair, which was spun glass. It gave the tree an iridescent glow while being extremely dangerous.

I remember when bread dough ornaments were all the rage in the early '80s. My mother and I made a bunch of them one year. You had to bake them in the oven until they dried out, and then you painted and shellacked them. Looking back, they were so tacky.

Too much is never enough.

R74, we had a tree topper that was an angel completely encircled in angel hair -- i.e., fiberglass. I hated touching that thing because no matter how careful I tried to be it was impossible not to get a few tiny shards in my fingers. Ugh.

Reading this thread reminds me how much easier life would have been for each and every one of us gaylings if we had had the internet and known that we were not alone in the universe.

no

I've always loved tinsel but we were never able to use it growing up because we always had cats and my mom said it could make them sick. As an adult I've always had cats too so no tinsel. We never had ribbons either for the same reason lol

How many innocent wild animals never had another Merry Christmas after eating the tinsel from your discarded tree?

I never really cared for it myself but remember it fondly. It was just something you put on your tree.

r18 unfortunately, those delicate glass ornaments rarely made it through two seasons, at least mine never did

R31, thank you. That was fascinating. So very Diane Arbus-y. I loved it.

When I was a kid we always had white lights because my mom thought colored lights were tacky. Especially the blinking ones. If we went to someone’s house who had them, she’d say “Oh! How festive.”

I do love our ornaments because they all have a special meaning and provenance. Now that I’m older, I really do appreciate having them.

OP - learn the difference between tinsel and icicles.

I love the ornaments at Daiso