The holidays bring on lots of old time Christmas memories and families often take the time to look at photos of days long gone. Have you ever noticed how many of your family Christmas trees are in your holiday photos?

I have a lot – sometimes, a person is in the picture standing by the tree and sometimes the tree itself is the star of the photo. I think the scent of pine, the shiny ornaments and pretty lights make it a natural to be photographed.

I won’t bore you with ALL the Christmas tree pictures I have – I haven’t counted, but I’d guess 30+ – but will share a few taken over several decades.

Grandmother’s House, 1956

Grandmother’s tree doesn’t have tons of ornaments, but look at all the tinsel PLUS the garland. My dad, mom and I drove to Massachusetts that year to spend Christmas with my grandparents. That was the only year we ever made the winter trip.

Me with the 1957 Christmas Tree

One of the most vivid Christmas memories I have is of Dad teaching me how to place only a couple of strands of Christmas tinsel on the tree at a time. No clumps were to be found on our tree! Getting the tinsel just right took a whole lot longer than stringing the lights and placing the ornaments. We always had a good-sized fresh tree – about 7 feet tall. Look at all the tinsel on the tree – it probably took a good hour to get the tree looking perfect!

Christmas 1961

The tree moved about ten feet to the left by 1961. The door seen in the last photo is just to the right of the television set. Unfortunately, the top of the tree can’t be seen, but I do notice that there is much less tinsel on this tree. I wonder if it is because I had a little brother getting into things?

Ruby & the 1965 Christmas Tree

I love this picture – the Stufflebeans went for one of those new-fangled aluminum Christmas trees in 1965. They were all the rage for a while. No needles to clean up in July and the tree could be used again the following year.

Our First Christmas Tree, 1979

Our first Christmas together was in 1979. Alta Loma still had a local tree farm where families could drive up the hill, pick out a tree and have it cut and brought to the car on the same day.

Dave is sitting next to the tree and he’s 6’1″, so you can get a sense of how big that tree was – about 8 feet tall and perhaps just as wide. It was a killer getting that into the tree stand, but it was a beautiful Christmas tree.

We continued to buy live trees all the years we lived in Alta Loma. This tree was relatively small compared to a few we had. I haven’t found a photo from my favorite year, though.

One tree that we chose was SO heavy, we had to buy a tub tree stand AND Dave had to put a plant hanger holder into the ceiling so we could tie twine around the top of the tree to anchor it upright.

I think that was a Christmas that happened before this one because this tree isn’t nearly as wide as some of them.

Since we moved to Arizona, we haven’t had a single live Christmas tree. It is so dry here that cut trees don’t survive the Christmas season very well. I do miss the scent of fresh cut trees!