Treeless Tradition Take A Break From The Formal Ritual: Deck The Halls And Forget The Tree

Growing up in a small town in east Texas, Houston floral designer David Brown rarely spent his holidays hiking into the woods - or a needlestrewn parking lot, for that matter - to search for the perfect Christmas tree.

“I honestly don’t remember ever having a normal Christmas tree,” Brown says. Instead, he recalls his parents spray-painting dead branches and decorating them with lavender lights. Or piling presents under a pyramid of tumbleweeds.

As an adult, Brown has continued the family tradition of forgoing a formal Christmas tree. For him, it’s a matter of professional burnout: After doing dozens of trees for clients, he can’t bear the thought of putting one up for himself. But others are beginning to question the holiday ritual as well.

Some object for environmental reasons to harvesting millions of living trees each year for a few weeks’ enjoyment. And putting up an artificial tree somehow doesn’t seem like a satisfactory substitute. Some reject the ritual on religious grounds. Still others can’t be bothered with caring for a tree and cleaning up the mess. Or they simply can’t spare the space.

Whatever the reason, deciding not to put up a tree doesn’t have to put a damper on the holidays. These days, there are plenty of ways to deck the halls without shelling out a small fortune for an evergreen that starts shedding its needles a few days later.

A fireplace mantel can be an excellent focal point for holiday decorating, especially in city apartments where space often is a problem, says David Madison, owner of David Madison Horticultural Design in New York. “It has that feeling of hearth and home and traditional values.”

Madison, whose designs frequently incorporate fresh vegetables and herbs, seed pods and oddly-shaped tubers, often drapes mantels with elaborate garlands of greenery, dried fruits and nuts. If the fireplace isn’t going to be used, he’ll decorate it, too - laying in large evergreen boughs or baskets of pine cones that carry the scent of Christmas, even without the tree.

For a minimalist Christmas, consider decorating the mantel with a swag of shimmery white fabric and tiny white lights. Bronze-painted branches can display a few gilded ornaments. Or simply hang ornaments from the mantel. If you don’t have a mantel, look around for an eye-catching picture shelf or window sill from which to suspend holiday mementos.

Even a graceful chair can be a simple substitute for a tree when hung with holiday treasures, such as beautiful ornaments, a strand of burnished nuts or shiny ribbon. Pick a wooden side chair with an elegant carved back, or paint a pretty flea market find in festive gold. Or try hanging a small wreath on the back of each dining chair and placing a gift for each guest in the seat.

San Francisco floral designer Stanlee Gatti favors such subtle seasonal touches instead of one grand gesture. In his home, which features modern ‘50s-style furniture and a monochromatic color scheme, holiday decorations might include a collection of antique nutcrackers and a branch of long-needle pine on the coffee table or a few green and gold vintage ornaments in a bowl on the dining room table.

One year, Gatti arranged a wall collage consisting solely of star-shaped tree toppers. The stark simplicity of the vintage tin and silver ornaments was the perfect complement to his contemporary decor.

“Christmas is the one time of the year you can decorate the house and it doesn’t seem very silly,” Gatti says. “But I believe it still has to go with the style of the house.”

For David Madison, putting up a Christmas tree seemed appropriate when he owned a large rambling home in the country. “Every year, I’d do a different theme,” he says. “One year we did a Mexican tree. We found wonderful straw hand-painted dolls and brightly colored plastic fruits. It was fun and campy.”

Madison always bought a live tree, however, so he could plant it in the yard later. “It always bothered me after Christmas to see stacks and stacks of dead trees lying and waiting to be picked up by the refuse company,” he said. Also, “this was one way of knowing how many years I’d been in my house because I’d have a row of Christmas trees growing in the back yard.”

When Madison gave up his country home for a smaller city apartment several years ago, he forfeited his Christmas tree tradition. Now instead of one large tree, he often buys a dozen or more Alberta spruce shrubs - ranging from about 8 inches to 2 feet high - and arranges them on a long mantel in his apartment. He places the undecorated shrubs in gold-leafed pots and fills in the mantel with gold-painted pine cones and gold French ribbon.

“After the holidays, I give them away to friends with terraces. They’re happy to get them and I’m happy not to have killed something,” he says.

A dining room buffet also could provide the setting for a miniature evergreen forest. For an even lusher look, add pots of blooming narcissus, tiny nut topiaries and a brightly colored table runner.

Or try decorating a large topiary instead of a tree. Designer David Brown chose a 7-foot-tall English ivy topiary for the stairway landing of his Houston home.

“I treated it as you would a Christmas tree, but it was a lot easier to decorate,” he says. Twinkling white lights were easily stuffed inside the topiary frame’s hollow spaces. Then Brown draped the exterior with dozens of glass ornaments and iridescent ribbons. After the holidays, the potted plant was defrocked and transferred to the patio for year-round enjoyment.

Brown bought his first traditional Christmas tree last year after a magazine asked to photograph his home for the holidays. But he ended up giving the 12-foot Noble fir to a neighbor. “Quite honestly,” Brown says, “I didn’t want to decorate it.”

Instead, he incorporates holiday cheer into every corner of the house. For instance, on a large marble coffee table he creates a seasonal tableau of golden holly, red holly berries and miniature pineapples. Brown also carries the motif of natural materials to the fireplace, where he crowns a hanging sculpture of folk art angels with a halo of red and black berries.

In the end, however, it doesn’t really matter whether you celebrate the season by decorating a 12-foot Christmas tree or by tacking up a single sprig of holly. What’s really important is the idea that the holidays are a time when we can embrace all sorts of traditions. It’s a time when we can open our hearts - and our homes - to others.

Sources

Hand-crafted gold-leafed ornaments by Margaret Furlong, $18.90 to $23.90 from Spiegel, The Holiday Book ‘95; (800) 345-4500.