I just watched a three-part series on a home decorating Website about how to decorate the perfect Christmas tree. I started to doubt the smartness in this series when the first video showed the consumer how to take the artificial tree out of the box.

A professional decorator proceeded to tell me to take three rolls of wide ribbon – this store  is in the business of selling lots of sparkly things to people – and meticulously thread the ribbon through the artificial tree.

She then added at least giant ornaments to the tree in addition to numerous strands of blinking lights.

By the time she got through, I couldn’t believe I’d wasted 4 minutes and 36 seconds to watch some girl turn an artificial tree into something that looked like a drunk decorated it for Bourbon Street.

I’m not an expert, but there are a few Christmas tree traditions we followed when our boys were young to ensure we had the perfect Christmas tree.

First, we always got our tree from a tree farm. You’ll find a tree that’s either a lot smaller once you get it home or so big you have to chop off the bottom two feet – for which you paid good money – just to get it through the door.

But while you’re out in the cold, walking through mud, listening to heated arguments over who gets to cut the tree down, you’ll eventually find a tree everyone can agree on.

Time to Decorate

At home, we employed a step-by-step method to decorate the tree. We started with the lights, and we’ve never had an evening of decorating the tree without someone stepping on the lights as we’re stringing them on the tree.

I can’t blame the boys. I’m always the one who steps on the lights.

Next is the garland. Every year, I tell myself to buy shimmery gold garland. Every year, I forget. So we end up with three feet of metallic silvery garland I bought back in the 1980s that only goes around the tree once. But it’s tradition to put garland on the tree, so we leave it.

Then it’s time for the ornaments. I have every single ornament my sons made, starting in pre-school all the way through elementary school. That now-yellowed macaroni angel has just as prominent a place on the tree as my ornament from the White House.

The most nostalgic ornaments on the tree are the one-inch thick slice from the bottom of the boys’ first Christmas tree. Nick’s is 33 years old, Stephen’s 28 and Chris’ is 27. They remind me how quickly they went from little babies to grown men.

Some of the ones I love the most are the plastic snowflake ornaments the moms at Pecan Grove Elementary gave to the students every year.

If I never said thank you, ladies, I’m doing so now. Those ornaments with my sons’ pictures from first through fifth grade are probably the most cherished decorations on our tree.

The final touch are the fake icicles. I tried to convince the boys to place the icicles on the tree one by one, but they were impatient by the time we got to that point in the decorating evening.

We ended up with clumps of icicles on the tree that look like blotches of aluminum foil. I’ve come to expect that’s how the tree should look.

So with half the lights working by the time Christmas Eve gets here, plastic Ronald McDonald ornaments peeking out in between the branches and faded bread-dough ornaments on the tips of the branches, I couldn’t ask for a more perfect, if somewhat unprofessional, Christmas tree.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.