As Autumn drifts into Winter it’s brown and rust colours are quickly replaced by the red, green and silver of December. Chestnuts are roasting on an open fire and apparently Good King Wenceslas last went out on the feast of Stephen.
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While the kids get ever more excited it’s time to start preparing for Christmas and what could be more important than the decorations we hang on our tree and around the home, but what were our favourite Christmas decorations back in the 90’s?
Centre stage in the sitting room was the Christmas tree, which was invariably placed at or near a window so that it could be seen by passers by. Real trees were still popular but were outsold by our love of the artificial version which had so may positives – especially no dropping pine needles. Agreed it doesn’t have the lovely pine smell but central heating quickly puts paid to that.
Decorated with loving care by all the family, lots of lights, (fairy and similar) were placed over the tree before overloading it with ornaments, however, as the nineties progressed ‘chasing’ lights that flashed in complex sequences became the norm and like many of the others quickly went out as a bulb either fell out or broke.
Personalised ornaments became popular especially ones such as ‘Baby’s 1st Christmas‘ and children’s names. Tinsel, the everlasting Christmas favourite, was draped around the tree and now coloured tinsel was heavily favoured. Old time family heirlooms and favourites were always to be found on the tree. Look carefully and you may have been able to find some candy canes or net bags of gold coloured ‘pennies’ hidden in the centre of the tree just waiting to be found.
Tradition demanded that at the top of the tree sat the fairy, in her beautiful net dress, holding a wand with a star on top, however, on many occassions tradition was swept to the side in favour of the now much more popular tree topper, often a light up star.
Often a much smaller tree could be found sitting on top of a corner table in the sitting room where pictures had been ‘tastefully’ decorated by yet more tinsel and sitting in the place of the everyday ornaments were light up churches, christmas trees, houses, and fireplace ornaments who when wound up all played different Christmas tunes. Candles once again became popular accessories for the table and higher-priced items like giant snow globes were often to be seen.
Do you still put nineties decorations on your Christmas tree? Take part in our Bygone Christmases section and tell us, below, about your favourite memory of Christmas in the 1990’s
