Holiday Decorating Secrets Revealed!

After my favorite morning-news show ended last week, I was enticed by one of those "teaser" commercials to stick around for the talk show that followed. They promised to show me designer secrets for decorating my Christmas tree.

I learned that I violate just about every single one of these rules:

Allot 100 lights per foot of tree. In what universe? If I haven't blown a fuse, then I haven't hung up enough lights. I made two trips to the store this year for 800 new strings of lights to add to the 800 or so I already had, for a total of at least 1600 lights on my 6 1/2-foot-tall tree. My husband says that the tree looks like it's being X-rayed, but he puts up with it.

Use a theme. OK, maybe. If you consider "Made in Kindergarten" a theme, then I've got it covered. We've got ornaments made from construction paper, pony beads, felt and google eyes. And let's not forget the "doily and toilet-paper tube angel" that's our tree topper this year, since our electric star no longer lights up.

Decorate from the top down. Clearly this designer does not have children. I let my younger son hang the unbreakables as far up as he can reach, then the teenagers take over with the fragile stuff in the high places. Those two do fight over whose special penguin ornament gets the tallest branch on the tree; it's a tradition. (Look carefully--you can see one right beneath the star). Meanwhile, their little brother hangs as many ornaments on a single branch as he can before the combined weight of the decorations causes them to slide off onto the tree skirt. The picture at right was taken five years ago; the circled area is "his" designated branch.

Step back as you decorate to check the effect. This one, I've got covered. Once the lights are on and the ornaments are liberated from their protective boxes and bubble-wrap, standing back is all I do. The kids are the ones hanging the decorations on the tree, and if I don't stay out of the way, I'll get trampled as they wrestle and push and shove to get their favorite stuff on their favorite branches. I do not rearrange things after they go to sleep, either. This is partially because two of them stay up later than me.

I'm never going to have a magazine-perfect Christmas tree. But my kids love finding "their" ornaments, and it's a lot of fun, even when they're vying for the tallest branch or the coveted "front-and-center" spot. My tree is all about what I love: my family.

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