Lol well my family sure did. If it wasn't the very weekend after Thanksgiving then it was definitely the next one. We never went more than a week into December without putting up our tree and having it fully decked out in ornaments, lights and that stringy tinsel crap that the cat would eat off of it. Now that I'm older I admit it took me until 12/11 to get my tree up, while my sister had her tree up, decorated and with wrapped presents under it the day after Thanksgiving. I realize I'm slipping.
As a kid I always loved decorating our Christmas tree. I got excited to open the box of ornaments and unwrap the tissue paper from the ones that were breakable. We always had a plastic tree, which I've always felt was a better choice. Mom pulled the tree out of the closet and reshaped the branches so that it wouldn't look like a Charlie Brown Christmas tree. The first thing we put on were the lights since they were the hardest to get right. When we got ready for the ornaments, we always had to put the round gold and red ball ornaments on first, but the same colors couldn't be too close together. Then came the odd ball ornaments; the ones with our names on them or the ones given to us by other family members.
As a kid most of our ornaments were either from the thrift store or were ornaments me or my sister had made at school. Through the years we acquired more 'normal' ones, but kept most of the originals. My favorite one was this wooden ornament that was shaped like....I'm not even sure....a skinny bear or something and he was painted green. He has two string on his head and his feet that made him to jumping jacks when you pulled them. I loved it as a kid but through the years he kind of started to lose pieces of himself, like a foot or a hand or an eye. He's on my tree today, still looks as pitiful as ever, and makes my husband why we still even have him.
Every year my mom would buy my sister and I a new ornament that was 'ours' on the tree. It became like a scrapbook because we could look back every year and remember when we got each one. When we grew up, we took most of the ornaments with us, and mine still make it onto my tree every year.
On top of the childhood ornaments, my husband and I still continue to buy each other an ornament to add to the tree. It gets harder every year since I've bought most of the super heroes one and even one that sings the "I Want a Hippopotamus" song. But it's fun to try every year and find new ones. And when we pull out the box and start putting up the tree, I pick up every one and say something like "remember when we were ____ and bought this one..." or "Oh we got this one _____ ." He then usually rolls his eyes and nods at me since he always knows where the ornaments came from. It doesn't really stop me from doing it every year.
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