CHRISTMAS Traditions- redneck style

[Big Dave]

Well here it is again folks. are there any down home Christmas tradions that you care to share with the world? Here is one of ours: Love live tree for Christmas. Smell is great in the house. I grew up in Texas and have alwys used Cedar for the tree. Now here in this part of Arkansas there are the same sort of tree, scrubb brush, what ever you want to call it. Small and pointed at the top like a Christmas tree is shaped. A few years back we just cound not find the right tree. Always flat or misshaped on one side and not good toward the top. Then it hit me . Why not take several trees and zip tie them toghther ??? We found three nice small ones and I had the honour of putting them together. Nice bushy thing with good support all the way around and good for holing the angel at the top. I used Green zip ties to hide the fact it was three trees.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!
Oh by the way if that offends you
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

[valgal]

Christmas Eve traditions are my favorite! My kids are in their twenties and won't let me change a thing. Appetizers, sugar cookies and egg nog by the fire. Each person reads a Christmas story - Rudolph, The Nutcracker, Twas the Night and The Christmas Story from the Bible. Yes, a little corny, but we look forward to it. One year my son was out of state and it just wasn't the same.

Valgal in SC

[Hears The Water]

We bake a birthday cake for Jesus the night before and on Christmas morning we eat that for breakfast. Yeah, sugar high plus Christmas presents, makes for a very hyped up Christmas morning. This year, not sure what will happen. I can't eat the cake and not sure if everyone will be here, so who knows what will go on. Oh well, it doesn't take away for the reason I chose to celebrate Christmas!
God bless you and yours
Deb

[Ravenlost]

One redneck thing my kids and I used to do was rub ham fat on our dog's Christmas present (usually a box of dog biscuits) so he would tear his gift open.

Oh...another one I remember fondly was me and the kids making gingerbread houses out of graham crackers and decorating them with the leftover Halloween candy...usually stuff they didn't like. We always saved the houses until the Fourth of July so the kids could stick firecrackers in them and blow them up. That fun tradition covered THREE holidays...Halloween, Christmas and the Fourth of July!

[samm]

i put the lighted reindeer and a spiral looking tree out back in the garden right along side of the bottle tree and the scarecrow so we can see it from the table, last year we actually got some "rain " and the lights were reflecting really nice like, and the scarecrow had a yellow shirt on, and i glanced out the window and got a shot of adrinalin cuz i thought someone was standing out back in the garden . we dont put nothing out front cuz we cant see it from where we stay at the most in the house which is the kitchen/den area,by the way we do put a santa hat on the scarecrow so he is in season...lol

samm

[jwal10]

We gather things from the woods to decorate our tree, berries, cones, holly, mistletoe, etc. We string popcorn and berries, colored glitter or fake snow on cones. A few wooden miniature kids toys. The tree is usually about 4' tall, set on a table draped with an old lace tablecloth and a small round tree skirt that Sweetie embroidered years ago....James

[Ravenlost]

James, I do that too. It's a tradition left over from when I was growing up. We always went out on the farm to find a cedar tree to bring home and gathered other items as well to use for decorating.

One of my fondest memories is of my mom climbing up to the top of a HUGE hemlock tree down at the bluff so she could cut the top off for our Christmas tree. That was the only time she did it...it was such a high climb that from then on we just cut some lower branches off the hemlocks to use for decorating.

[DamnearaFarm]

Hmmm.....well.....

Somehow we misplaced the christmas tree stand for our fake tree. I popped the pole in a stand I had for a real tree but the blasted thing kept falling over. Since the tree sits in front of a window I tied balin' twine (it is a cowboy christmas themed tree, after all!) to the sturdy wooden curtain rod mounts and solved the issue for that year.
Next year I was ready.....a metal garbage can painted silver, a bag o' quikrete and the pole from the tree.... that baby isn't goin' ANYWHERE!

[snowlady]

Our tree topper is a white cowboy hat. It has absolutely nothing to do with us! Many years ago we were visiting DH's brother in Houston and the neighbor brought over this hard plastic like cowboy hat for DH. He had to carry it on his lap the whole flight home and when we got here, he just plopped it on our tree. So there it is, year after year and we love it.

[vicker]

We used to put a food out fit Saint Nick, but we'd also put a bowl of water out for the reindeer. Every Christmas morning we'd see Rudolf's nose print on the bottom of the bowl.

Lipstick

[soulsurvivor]

We gave away the mounted deer heads but when they graced our living room walls they got decorated every Christmas with jingle bells. We also had 2 of those outdoor reindeer made out of wood logs. We finally burned those in the woodstove.

Last year we just went all out redneck with our decorating and we have a red silk poinsettia tree with lights that turn colors. It's setting on top of the Amish made electric heater that has the fake fire going in the fireplace. Words don't do it justice it's so pretty. It's so pretty we leave it on display year round.

[barnyardgal]

I do tie my artificial tree to the wall with wire cause of the dogs/cats in the house.

I am guilty of cutting a ceder tree to put out by the bird feeder outside so birds have a place to sit while anticipating the feeder,always fun to watch in the winter...also wire it to the feeder post..

I have a lot of redneck ways here on the farm year round!! and they work to!

[ginnie5]

I guess I was redneck when redneck wasn't cool! We always found several small cedars and tied them together...green pipe cleaners blend in real good! Oh and a 5g bucket filled with rocks and sand make a good stand. We've tied the tree to the wall many times over the years, for years my star at the top was a homemade with tinfoil......
The garland hanging over the fireplace is made with twine and strips of fabric...........

and not Christmasy but when I make jelly I put the peels and cores in a muslin bag and hang them overnight....with a piece of rope from 2 screws in the beam across the kitchen.

[SteveD(TX)]

My grandmother would always have a gumdrop tree, made from a thorny bush of some kind or maybe a limb from a bois d arc tree. Mostly for decoration but she'd allow her grandkids to eat some before we went home.

[suitcase_sally]

Originally Posted by SteveD(TX)

My grandmother would always have a gumdrop tree, made from a thorny bush of some kind .

We used a hog apple bush.

I've looked up "hog apple" and nothing is what I remember. It was a small thorny bush that had small, pea-sized "apples" on it. Very good!

This was around Moore county, North Carolina. We had them for Easter. I guess it was the Easter version of the Christmas tree.

[Bat Farm]

I am glad to hear we are not the only ones who have had to tie the tree to the wall. A couple of years back we had a 23ft tall cedar (it was on a work site and was going to be cut down anyway). We used two boat cleats screwed into the wall to hold it up. Even being as big as it was I had enough ornaments to cover it... DH thinks I need a 12 step program for my collection of Christmas decorations.

This weekend his mom and I made some more

[Ozarks Tom]

Carrying on a tradition from when I was a kid, we always leave a double-shot of whiskey out to warm Santa up. It's always gone in the morning.

Is that redneck enough?

[Chief Cook]

My sister always put out a jelly bean tree each year. One year her two kids were in trouble all the first week she had it out. It was made from a mesquite branch and jelly beans. She kept it on the coffee table and she thought the kids were stealing the jelly beans, hence the trouble for the kids. One day she noticed something out of the corner of her eye and watched her german shepard dog gently take a jelly bean off that tree!!!! Needless to say the kids got plenty of "make up" goodies that year.