Our new place had 11 foot ceilings. The kids went out with their uncle to cut a tree and wanted one 10 feet tall. A 10 foot tall tree gets pretty broad at the base. We spent the holiday season sidling round the giant tree and we could only see the TV if we sat on the floor. There was an amazing amount of needles to clean up afterword.

I want a early or mid-century, weird, space between the branches, crazy tree. A real tree, but with that look. I could never in a million years find a fake that looked like the one I want. I want one so bad. What are they?? Are they balsam or fir or pine or what? My husband says that they were just any old tree, but grown before nurseries started trimming and shaping all the personality out. Some of them look like just the tops of trees.

I find modern Christmas trees depressing, what with their perfection and their fatness and their even shapes. I got a very good bit of advice from Martha Stewart (not directly....) a few years ago - go pick out your tree, and before you bring it inside, saw half of the branches off. It's SO fantastic. I make boughs and wreaths with the branches I cut off, and I end up with a crazy, half naked tree. Every year when I hack away, my family gets mad at me. But when it's filled with ornaments and tinsel, it turns into the most beautiful thing in the world. There has to be lots of empty space for the ornaments to hang in.

Below is part of my gallery of saved images from all over the web, of trees that I love. I save them and sigh over them every December. It would be the best Christmas present ever to have a tree that looked like one of these - crazy unkempt branches, almost a ball shape (that is, larger at the top or middle than at the bottom, almost like an upside down Christmas tree), lots of tinsel, and big colored bulbs. I would never stop staring at it. I know in reality that most of these trees are too wide to fit into any of my rooms, but I would love a smaller one. A girl can dream.

The first two photos are of the same family, taken a couple of years apart. You can see the same ornaments on both trees. It tickles me to see how miserable everyone looks.

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That is a great tradition, redvixen.

When I was little my dad used to go into the woods and cut down a tree. It was a fir tree -- a proper Christmas tree. I don't know how these were growing in the Florida woods but he knew where to go I suppose.

My mom used to have my sister and I string popcorn for our trees. Stringing yards and yards of popcorn can be very hard on the hands. It was fun though.

Here is a picture of my "big" tree. I still have a couple more dozen ornaments to put on it. It needs some stand out garland, too. The smaller tree will be decorated.

Those are great photos, iconomy. I love the last tree. I love white trees.

Your tree turned out to be the perfect size for your room, Lori!

Yeah, it looks good. I'm happy with it. The kids loved going up the ladder to decorate the top branches.

Oh, and thanks, BoringPostcards. :-)

I want a early or mid-century, weird, space between the branches, crazy tree. A real tree, but with that look. I could never in a million years find a fake that looked like the one I want. I want one so bad. What are they??

You're in luck, LoriFLA has one at her house that she's trying to get rid of.

Thanks, Lori.

iconomy, you're a girl after my own heart. I love that photo collection, and that crazy unkempt tree is exactly the kind I want, too.

You may be right about cultivation being the only difference, since I'm sure most of these were balsams or douglas firs too.

In high school I worked at a Christmas tree farm for a while. It was insane how much effort went into making the trees cone-shaped. From the time they were planted, they were pruned and trimmed and fertilized into submission, with the goal of making them look filled out with no "bum" side and a perfect taper to the top. There are all manner of weird specialized Christmas tree pruning tools to give you that special, manufactured look. Without bothering with that, you'd get a much more naturalistic, roadside-type tree.

I hope you find a tree like that, Miko. I'd love to see photos of your tree if you do.

It's been a dream of mine to have a little Christmas tree grove in my backyard, where I can grow and cut and replant my own trees. I'd let them grow any which way they wanted to. If I ever do have a grove, I'll invite you to come and claim your own crazy tree.

IKO'S KRAZY EKSMAS TREES!
ON SALE JULY-FEB

I'll take that one!

That puny, off-kilter one. With the old beehive in it.

Since we have been in Eugene, we have always had candles on our tree. There are these little candle clips we got in a German store.

One time we had a tree in the back yard, grown from a little sapling that daughter got at school. We let it go a year too long. . .

Daughter now is aghast that we could have candles on the tree.

iconomy, that's the kind of tree my friend D gets every year. To be completely honest I am pretty sure that she and her husband go out to the woods with a saw and cut the top off some random tree. Yes, this may be immoral or just plain wrong, but hey, it always looks wonderful.

Last year my daughter and I bought a hot tree. This strange Jamaican guy who occasionally sets up short lived and slightly peculiar businesses (video arcade & fresh fruit stand, anyone? Storefront church with tiki torches and jerk chicken sandwiches?) in the space that once was a garage next to my favorite bar, suddenly appeared there one day with a whole bunch of suspiciously cheap Christmas trees. It was awesome. $25 and 15 minutes later and this great tree was in my living room. Okay it fell off a truck, but hey, buy local and you can't get much more local than that. I hope he comes back this year.

In Baltimore the eye bank sells trees every year to raise money. I always wished they would decorate a tree as signage with nothing but glowing eyeballs and one year even offered to help them do it, but they looked at me strangely and backed away.

One year we had a ridiculously luxurious group visit to a christmas tree farm where we were invited to tramp about the fragrant wood and select any tree we wanted, after which healthy teenage boy slaves cut them down for us and loaded them onto a delivery vehicle that brought them to our doorstep the next day. After tramping and picking, we were invited into the owners' gorgeous home to enjoy live music, champagne and fabulous hors d'oeuvres before getting back on the bus what brought us, which had its own bartender to keep us properly toasted the entire way there and back.

Even though I had a career position at this time that would often afford some cool and off-the-wall stuff like this, it didn't come from that. We just happened to be very regular customers of a certain jazz club in NOLA, and the owner did this as a gift to her employees plus a very few favored regulars (people who were favorites of the staff, not the biggest spenders). Best Christmas Tree acquisition EVAR.

(we also had a year of fell-off-the-truck tree, mgl!)

This year is very bad financially, omg, so we'll just decorate the existing potted Benjamin in our living room... they're always lovely and delicate with fairy lights. I'm just so reluctant to denude it later.

I have a fibre-optic tree which I bought from QVC when they first came out in the UK about 15 years ago. It was horrendously expensive at the time and was a huge novelty for a couple of years until they became cheap as chips and common as muck. Every year I say I'll get rid of it, but then I set it up and it looks so pretty that I always keep it. I have so many ornaments, now, though, that I think I might need a bigger tree next year. This one is a 5ft tree.

It has a cat angel on the top that I bought at the National Cat Club Show, which always used to be on the second Saturday in December, at Olympia. I was only thinking today that as I'll be in town on 12 Dec for the theatre, I would go to the cat show first, but they've moved it and it was last weekend. They always have lots of Christmas cat-related stuff.

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I am the only person ever in this street to put lights outside at Christmas. Ever. In the 44 years since these flats were built. They are SO conservative round here. I am going to add some extra this year. Last year I had blue and white. But it needs a bit of multi-colour to add a little extra chav to the street. If I'm going to lower the tone, I might as well lower it good and proper. I am sorely tempted by an inflatable nativity scene featuring The Simpsons which would look lovely on the front lawn ...

Best Christmas ever was in Ohio in 2006. I stayed on a Christmas tree farm. At Christmas. It was the most Christmassey Christmas since Christmas began.

The year I got divorced, I was really poor. I wasn't making much money, and between child-support and spousal-support payments and my own rent and expenses, I was going into debt every month, and couldn't justify spending anything on a disposable tree. My little, low-ceilinged basement apartment was looking bleak. I was long-distance dating a woman across the country, and she needed to be with her family on Christmas. I was feeling pretty low.

About a week before Christmas, a package arrived. Inside was a 2-foot-tall live tree, fully decorated, even with battery-powered lights. My girlfriend had decorated it and mailed it to me, just regular USPS. I still get a little teary thinking about it.

Aw, mrmoonpie. I've got the reverse side of the story.

During the first Gulf War, my then-fiance was deployed in the Gulf. I sent care packages which got to him surprisingly regularly. (Turned out sending parcel post instead of first class got things there faster).

For Christmas, I found an itty bitty plastic tree with some wimpy garland and a gold plastic star on top. I ripped apart a tree topper and wrapped its lights around the tree and sent it all off.

Since it was going to be plugged in a Navy plug, it had to be inspected and approved for connection. We still have the tree, and it still has the tag with the inspector's approval and the date.