Miracle on Fulton St.

If you’re in or around New Orleans, be sure to visit Harrah’s to see their Miracle on Fulton Street display.  There are lots of fun events that you can find listed on their website.  This year they’re using one of our giant artificial Christmas trees along with our commercial Chrsitmas ornaments:

Giant Sequoia Tree

Christmas Ornaments

The display is located on the side of the Harrah’s hotel, not the casino.  If you walk down Poydras St. you’ll see the giant Santa at the foot of the entrance:

Giant Santa

Of course your Christmas experience wouldn’t be complete without a visit to our shop.  So come on down to 1025 Decatur St., see our thousands of Christmas ornaments, and say hello!

Following yesterday’s new addition to our frosted trees, we’ve got a new flocked Christmas tree called the Winter Dream.  It’s a great option for anyone looking for a heavily flocked artificial Christmas tree with a narrow profile.  The down swept branches make it particularly beautiful!

And here is a great idea for really cute and inexpensive Christmas decorations…Crochet Christmas Ornaments:

You can find plenty more on the Kimbles At Home blog.

We’ve just added a new tree to our selection of Frosted Christmas Trees, the Frosted Kingston Fir.  This is a beautiful tree with light frosting and super realistic needles.  The needles are made in a mold to look and feel just like a real Christmas tree.  It comes in an unlit 6.5′, and pre-lit 7.5′ and 9′ sizes.

Christmas Tree

One thing almost every Christmas celebration has in common is a Christmas tree.  Yet, very few people know much about where they came from and when they were first used.  To satisfy that curiosity, here is a post on the history of the Christmas tree.

The first written mention of a Christmas tree appears to be from a pagan New Year celebration in Riga, Latvia in 1510.  A couple of decades later Christmas trees were appearing in city centers throughout Germany, and today Christmas is still celebrated in city centers throughout Europe with a strong spirit of tradition.  (Here is a video of a Christmas market in Vienna, Austria from 2007.)  By the late 16th Century Christmas trees were being decorated with items such as apples and cheese, and at some time during the 17th Century individuals began to celebrate Christmas in their own homes.

During the 18th Century more and more people in Germany began using Christmas trees in thier homes, and it was also during this time that wax candles were used to lite the trees during celebrations.  In most of Europe real candles are still used today rather than Christmas lights.  In the 19th Century, the use of the Christmas tree began to spread widely throughout Europe, and this custom was also brought to the US by German immigrants in the 1800’s.  By the mid 1800’s Christmas trees were being sold throughout the US and Europe.

During this same period, the mid-1800’s, artificial Christmas trees were made to prevent deforestation in Germany.  The first artificial Christmas trees in the US appeared in the early 1900’s, and since that time there have been many advances in the production of artificial trees from giant artificial Christmas trees to colored Christmas trees.  Next time someone asks you about the history of the Christmas tree, you’ll know what to tell them!

Giant Commercial Christmas Tree

Although Christmas is still a little more than two months from now, outdoor Christmas decorations usually begin to go up around Thanksgiving Day.  With about one month left until they start appearing, cities and companies wanting to display items like giant artificial Christmas trees are quickly reaching the end of their opportunity to purchase commercial Christmas decorations in time for the 2008 season. 

Commercial Christmas Tree Frame

Unlike residential artificial Christmas trees, commercial trees have an entirely different type of construction due to their size.  Rather than having a center pole construction they’re assembled by bolting concentric steal rings one on top of another, and then inserting the branches into these rings as you can see in the above image.  Because these trees and their components are so large, they are shipped by freight, which typically takes a few days longer than FedEx or UPS.  For this reason, large commercial Christmas decorations are best ordered early in the year to be sure there is time for reciept and installation.

A great post I’ve been meaning to link to here was started by Annette, called Unique Christmas Tree Themes.  She’s posted info on how to make your tree into a Gingerbread Tree, a New Baby Tree, and plenty of others.

We’ve been very busy choosing new artificial Christmas trees for our website in all categories.  For our PE Artificial Christmas Trees we have several new additions for 2008 including the Green Baby Pine, Green River Spruce, and Redwood Pine.  All of these new PE trees look incredibly realistic with a combination of PE and PVC needles.  In our traditional Christmas tree category we have 7 new trees, including the Classic Blue Tree pictured above.

We also have two new flocked artificial Christmas trees, the Flocked Pagoda Pine and Flocked Sierra, and one new frosted Christmas tree, the Wintery Pine, pictured above.  And in addition to our residential trees, we’ve added a new giant artificial Christmas tree, the Giant Sequoia.  The Giant Sequoia comes standard up to 44′ tall and in three different light configurations: mini lights, C7 lights, and LED C7 lights.  Next up…new LED Christmas Lights.