Our Worst Christmas Tree Ever!

My children HATE our Christmas tree. I am not exaggerating! Words like "horrible", "jankie" (rhymes with yankie, means hotmess), "ugly", "worst-tree-ever" have all been used to describe our 1st French Christmas tree. I guess it all started to go down hill when we only paid 27 euros ($35) for a live tree. In the states, a live tree this size costs about $75, so this was a bargain! Of course they sell more expensive trees here in France, but why pay more?

When we first brought it home, it leaned a little, so we just rotated it in the base, secured it with the screws and it was fine. We added water to the base and 1 string of lights to the tree. One string! Yes, only one string. At 25-55 euros per string, one is really all you need. And unfortunately, we couldn't bring our lights from home since the bulbs and the voltage here is different from the US. Why didn't we buy a pre-lit tree you ask? Well, they are very expensive and besides, a live tree seemed more "French". I also wanted to add a bit of "snow" to the tree since it snows here and the look is very popular. I bought 3 cans of snow spray and sprayed away. 15 minutes and 2 open windows later, I was done applying fake snow to our real tree. The problem was that the tree did not look snowy, it just looked ashy and gray. The fake snow that was so light when first applied was quickly soaked up by our dry tree. Oh well, that's nothing a few ornaments can't fix. My children were not so optimistic.

The theme for this French Tree was Christmas Around the World. In my mind, I wanted to start a collection of ornaments from our travels around Europe that we would cherish for years. So I didn't bring any ornaments from the states. In reality that meant that until I bought new ornaments, we had a tall, ashy, dimly lit tree. I managed to purchase 14 ornaments from a sale at a local store to get us started. I decided that I wanted a multi-colored tree only decorated with balls, a departure from our usual red and gold tree with black angels theme. Now the description, "crazy peacock", was added to the list of names for the tree.

But I was not discouraged! I had a plan. On our upcoming trip to Christmas markets in France and Germany, I would purchase the most beautiful ornaments to save my tree! Well I did purchase many ornaments, from France, Germany and Switzerland. I even had a set of glassballs hand-painted with each of our names on them. The children also gave me ornaments for Christmas to help save our tree, but we all forgot one important thing. We left for 5 days to visit Christmas Markets and we did not leave water in the tree base. When we returned, needles were everywhere! If we just touched one branch, all the needles would fall off that branch! My tall, ashy, dimly lit, sparsely decorated tree, was falling apart. I finally surrendered. It was Christmas Eve and nothing could save that tree. At least I have a good start on my ornment collection!