It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas
Margery McCurdy Plummer

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, has been for quite a while. Now it’s all over the place, Christmas music, Christmas sweaters, Christmas shopping and Christmas trees.

The display of Christmas trees in stores and homes, each, it seems, decorated more beautifully than the other makes me think of Christmases we had in our home over the years.

In my childhood years, we started with trees cut in the woods or field and decorated with no lights and a foil covered cardboard cut out star for the top of the tree. There was a limited amount of ornaments, some icicles and a little tinsel.

It wasn’t long until we got lights and more sophisticated decorations and an angel with a lighted halo around its head.

For many years there wasn’t much of a change in our trees, then people started going for artificial trees, which I thought when covered with enough “stuff” could almost pass for a real tree.

“It will never happen at our house,” I said. “I want an authentic, traditional tree that smells green.”

We had the real thing for some time with strange variations. One Christmas the man of the house decided that tree lights were dangerous, could short out and burn things down. So I designed one decorated with artificial poinsettias, pink ones instead of red, which did nothing to compensate for the dullness of a lightless tree.

Finally, as I got older and tree lots where we bought “real” trees got colder, I consented to artificial or “faux” trees.

It wasn’t the same but certainly was easier. We went to several artificial type trees, some satisfactory, some plain crazy looking.

Remember aluminum trees with a color wheel instead of lights? They’re back now with more allowance for decorations and lights, maybe built in. They’re very modern looking, but I still think they look like some futuristic creation from outer space. We tried one, for one season.

One year I came up with a very unique idea all my own. I thought a “jewelry” tree would be beautiful. Believe it or not, it was. It glittered and shone with “diamond” and all colors of costume jewelry. Necklaces, chains, drop earrings, bracelets all of it. With lights shining through all of this glittering, shining, glowing, and sparkling array of jewelry, it was something to behold. To one who likes “sparkles” of any kind, this was the ultimate. The trouble was, it didn’t look like a genuine Christmas tree.

It was a first for me and for a lot of people who thought it was the most beautiful tree they had ever seen. It was even ahead of a tree I saw featured in the newspaper. A young couple living in an upscale condominium in Nashville had come up with a unique idea for a Christmas tree. The idea was a Jewelry tree. There was a lot of print about the couple and an almost full page picture of the tree. Not a bad idea, and I beat them to it.

Our next artificial experiment was a small fiber optic tree full of glitter, bubbles and glow, but it was not tradition, I can tell you. It blew up after the first year. We’re now back to artificial tradition and probably will stay there.

I’ve seen all kinds of wonderful, wonderland trees, Opryland’s, Cheekwood’s display of Christmas trees from around the world. I’ve watched the lighting of trees at the Capitol tree in Nashville, in New York, in Washington at the White House (via TV).

They’re beautiful to see, but the one year after year for about 20 years that I remember more than any are the trees that stood in the Library in White House, TN.

Sherry Eden spent countless hours of her time and resources year after year to present to the city a variety of creatively decorated trees. Her talent and tireless efforts won’t be forgotten. They always seemed to me to be a labor of love for the city and the Library. We owe Sherry a debt of gratitude.