Creative alternatives to the traditional Christmas tree (w/video)

A Christmas tree does not have to be a tree. It doesn’t even have to be green or particularly look like a tree. If it has a tree shape, lights and ornaments, gather around its glory.

The first artificial trees - metal wire trees covered with bird feathers, sometimes dyed green - first appeared in the late 19th century in Germany. During The Great Depression the Addis Brush Company invented the first modern artificial tree, the “Silver Pine,” using the same machinery they used to make toilet brushes. By the 1960s, tinsel trees of silver aluminum rotated on revolving color bases in modern homes.

Since then, the artificial tree has been perfected to fool the eye into thinking it is fresh-cut. But there has been a backlash. Some people, who don’t need a tree to look like a tree, have gone rogue, creating their own custom Christmas-tree-like creations that satisfy the desire for twinkly lights without the expense and mess.

Manzanita Branch

A fallen manzanita branch has served as the Christmas tree year after year for Cherylyn McCalligan and her husband James, who created a stand for it and painted it white.

Each year they decorate the branch in a different theme based on their travels. One year it was a peace tree with white lights and a dove. The year they traveled to the Far East it sported pagodas and a little geisha that appeared to be walking through a forest of red lanterns.

“I’ve done a lot of things with that branch,” said McCalligan, who lives in the upper Sonoma Valley. “It comes in handy.”

She said she and her husband don’t feel a compelling need for a traditional tree because they always spend Christmas with family in the Northwest.

“This is an opportunity to do something a little different and more imaginative,” she explained.

Tree of Books

Librarians Sami Lange and Molly Matheson turned a bunch of discarded books into a festive beacon for the foyer of the Mahoney Library at Santa Rosa Junior College’s Petaluma campus.

“They were discharges, books that are too old to keep in our collection and they can’t be sold because the information isn’t current,” said Lange of what is dubbed “The First Annual Book Tree.” Included in the stack, which Lange and Matheson have been collecting for months, are outdated sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica and the Encyclopedia of Science and Technology.

“It was a little touch-and-go at first,” Lange said. It took three or four tries before they got the hang of balancing the books in increasingly smaller layers, starting with a ring of 10. The whole thing now stands about four feet tall Lang and Matheson have set aside some shelves and will keep collecting discards to build a taller book tree next Christmas.

“It’s a way to create a festive, visual object for people, a little pop,” said Lange, “right in the midst of finals.”

Chinese Plate Tree

With both of her grown kids out of town this Christmas, Patti Zimmer just didn’t feel motivated to haul out the decorations and put up a traditional tree in her small Santa Rosa home. So she dreamed up an alternative using her huge collection of Chinese and Japanese plates.

She stacked them with earthquake putty - the largest on the bottom - and topped the tower with a beautiful Chinese pitcher. She then wrapped her “tree” in Christmas lights.

“It looks like The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party,” she said with a laugh.

Zimmer, an Asian art lover, now designs fabric inspired by many of the plates she has found at flea markets, the very plates that now make up her holiday tree.

“I do miss the smell of the pine,” she said. “But we live in a very small house and so we have always had small ornaments.”

Scrap Wood Tree

A photo of singer/songwriter Jack Johnson’s scrap-wood Christmas tree that appeared on the cover of Coastal Living Magazine prompted Lori Hebner to ask hubby Mike Hebner to make one just like it.

The retired Sonoma electrician-turned-furniture-maker cut a 2-by-2 piece of wood into an octagon shaped stem, into which he attached branches made of quarter-inch plywood. It stands about 8 feet tall and is 3-feet wide and is adorned with four strands of lights, each with triple clusters of bulbs.

“We usually buy a Christmas tree like everyone else. But it just doesn’t make sense any more. And I really don’t like the manufactured, out-of-a-box kind of tree, the fake ones,” said Mike. “I think this is a good alternative and I can pack it up into a small container.”

The tree is now standing between the living room and dining room.

“I’m really happy with the results,” he said. “And my wife loves it. She just thinks its a great idea.”

Green Felt Cut-out Tree

For years Eileen Avila-White struggled to wedge a Christmas tree into her tiny living room. But wall space was at such a premium she had to put the tree against her front door, leaving the only way in and out of the 870-square foot home through the kitchen door and out into the garage.

Her solution? Create a two-dimensional tree out of two yards of green, sparkly felt and then hang it on the door of her bathroom, which happens to be right off the living room.

She has decked her space-saver tree with pompons, gemstones and lights. Her husband even made some fake presents out of cereal boxes done up with Christmas wrap.

“Now we can have two couches in the living room,” she said, all the better to snuggle up and watch the lights from her flat tree.

Christmas Card Tree

Rohnert Park native and Rancho Cotati High grad Stephanie Munoz is now living in a tiny apartment in Oakland. To solve her space dilemma, she decided to arrange a selection of Christmas cards into the shape of a tree and tack it onto her wall.

“My first attempt, the cards fell off the wall within 10 minutes of them going up. But my second attempt was more successful,” said Munoz, who works in a custom print shop and collected about 100 different cards designed by artists whose work was printed there. The whole project, with lights, took about 90 minutes to assemble.

The tree of cards now stands floor to ceiling - about 7 feet tall - and occupies a key spot beside the couch in the her living room.

“I plug it in every night when I get home,” she said. “As small as those lights are, they put off a lot of light. We won’t even need to turn on the lights in the room.”

She plans to continue adding to her card collection for next year, not only with cards from the shop but cards she receives in the mail from friends and family.

Rusty Metal Tree Sculpture

About 10 years ago, Susan and George Rothert were in Phoenix, Ariz., and noticed a number of decorative metal trees featured in the stores. They were fabulously expensive. But when the couple spotted something similar but more affordable at Swede’s Feeds in Kenwood, not far from their Bennett Valley home, they decided they’d found their Christmas tree for life.

The rusty metal piece of garden art stays outdoors in the summer. But on Christmas they bring it inside and decorate it with souvenir magnets they collect from their travels.

“There’s no mess. It doesn’t drop needles and we don’t have to go shopping for one every year,” said Susan Rothert, adding that she and her husband always spend Christmas with relatives, who always have a real tree. So they never feel deprived.

“This works for us,” she said.

Sunflower Stalk Tree

Last year Lois Cook lost her 50-year-old daughter, a single mother, to cancer.

“Needless to say, I did not feel like celebrating the holidays,” the Ukiah woman said. “However, it seemed like I should do something for her 18-year-old son. For several years the three of us had Christmas at my house using an artificial tree, which I could not find anywhere. Finally, the day before Christmas, I realized I needed to do something and looking out at my garden I realized that a dead sunflower stalk looked a lot like a tree. I sprayed it with gold paint, added some decorations and voila!”

Driftwood Tree

Sheree Wilder would rather make something than buy it ready-made. So when she saw a Christmas tree made out of driftwood featured in a local shop, she got her crafting game on.

She and her husband went to Mendocino and collected the driftwood, gathering several different lengths and sizes, and laying them out in the shape of a Christmas tree.

“After figuring the shape, I took each piece and drilled a hole through the center. We got a larger piece of driftwood for the base, and drilled a hole through that also,” she said. “I took a trip to the hardware store and bought a 5-foot piece of 3/8-inch all-thread (metal rod), since my holes were also 3/8 inches. Then I began to assemble, fitting the all-thread through the base and securing it with a washer and bolt from the bottom. Then, starting with the largest piece, I began staggering them beginning with the largest and ending with the smallest in size. Voila. My Christmas tree made from driftwood is standing tall! I wanted to not spend a bunch of money on my decorations, so I made ornaments using wire, abalone shells, beach glass, and stone.”

Ladder Tree

Cindy Hunt of Santa Rosa said her daughter, Jasmine, dug out an old wooden ladder that had been leaning against the side of their house for years. She set it out to dry in the sun, cleaned it off and brought it into the house. Dressed up, it is now posing as the family Christmas tree.

Paper Snowflake Tree

Susie McGavin of Petaluma displayed her tree in the window. Or, more accurately, on the window. She made big paper snowflakes and attached them to her front picture window in the shape of a Christmas tree. It is 4 1/2 feet tall and, she boasts, “completely recyclable.”

Fishing Line Christmas Tree

Dobie Edmunds and Thomas King live in a log house in Cloverdale. For the past few years they have strung up a strand of lights in the shape of a tree on their living room wall behind the couch. They hang their round ornaments on fishing line from small nails behind the facing where the cathedral ceilings meet the wall, which lets the ornaments hang freely in front of the multi-colored lights.

For the flat decorations, they use very small nails between the logs so they don’t make any holes in the wood.

You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com or 521-5204.