Not Your Usual Christmas Tree

First of all, this is not my Christmas tree. This particular tree belonged to erissiva at flickr. I wanted to share this with you because Christmas comes in a lot of varieties and this one is particular to the southwest.

A little background first. I grew up out west, and in the early 70's my family moved to Arizona. Up until that time our Christmas tree was always an evergreen variety. It didn't take long, however, before the desert lifestyle became a part of our Christmas tradition. One year my parents gathered some tumbleweeds, arranged and trimmed them into a tree shape, and created a tree like the one you see here. The tumbleweeds started out brown but with some flocking they took on a snowy white color. Some years the tumbleweed tree was backlit with a colored light and other times it was strung with tree lights.

If you want to create one of your own there is a website where you can order (I kid you not) tumbleweeds for decorating! If you don't like flocking you can leave them brown or spray them any color you like. Some glittery spray might be nice, or silver, or iridescent. My parents created a stand that was basically a platform with a post (dowel or broomstick) in the middle. Stack your tumbleweeds over the center post. You may need to wire them together here and there. Bread bag twisties will work well for this. You will want to keep your decorations on the light side as tumbleweeds don't hold heavy items well. Another cute variation on this theme is to create a snowman. Wouldn't it be cute to have several snowmen singing carols?

Take a chance, make a change, and shake things up a bit! Do Christmas different for a change. If that's a bit too much for you, have your traditional tree in one room and have a taste of the southwest in another.