{"id":3749,"date":"2015-12-07T08:42:56","date_gmt":"2015-12-07T15:42:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hijenx.us\/?p=3749"},"modified":"2015-12-07T08:42:56","modified_gmt":"2015-12-07T15:42:56","slug":"minor-differences-christmas-ornaments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hijenx.us\/?p=3749","title":{"rendered":"Minor Differences: Christmas Ornaments"},"content":{"rendered":"

The British tend to put something they call a\u00a0bauble<\/a>\u00a0on their Christmas trees. Americans would probably recognize this as a type of ornament often called Christmas balls.\u00a0\"Christmas-Balls-3-540x391\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The bauble or ball is just the beginning of what Christmas ornaments are on an American tree. I believe this is due to a large number of Americans having some German heritage. Germans too have a much more complex tradition of Christmas tree ornamentation, probably due to being the first people to\u00a0put up Christmas trees<\/a>, while the British didn’t do this till about two centuries\u00a0ago when Queen Victoria married a German<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In Germany, they make things that you might expect, like this:<\/p>\n

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But they also make much more individualized items like this one:<\/p>\n

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This has fed the American appetite for more personalized Christmas ornaments. It is not uncommon to give ornaments that pertain to one’s career or hobbies as gifts, resulting in a family accumulating a large and varied collection over the years. For instance, these are two of mine, where were both gifts:<\/p>\n

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And one of my mom’s:<\/p>\n

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Here’s our brief video on Christmas ornaments:<\/p>\n