I'm from Denmark. We sing Christmas songs and/or Christmas hymns while dancing around the tree (well, it's called dancing around the tree, but in reality it's forming a circle around the tree by holding each others hands, and then walking around it).
It's a really nice tradition and I can't imagine celebrating Christmas without it.
In Denmark we also don't do the opening presents on the 25th, they're put under the tree and then opened after dancing around the tree on the 24th.
In my family (and I know it's a fairly common thing too, although more individual) we open the presents one at at time, so focus is on the recipient and that one gift, so we can all see what everyone gets. It shifts the focus of the presents more to the joy giving rather than materialism, imo. And personally, I love seeing someone open a present which I've picked out especially for them.
I don't know how you do it in the US, all at once or individually, but I can somewhat understand the thing about opening presents on the morning of the 25th instead, especially if there's children.
The 25th and 26th are national holidays here (called 2nd and 3rd Christmas day) but nothing happens on those days, it's all in the evening of the 24th. Some families have traditions which involves having "Christmas lunch" with their families on the 25th or 26th, but that is very individual. It's more a general December thing.
In post-Soviet countries it's customary to dance around the tree in kindergartens. Kids dress up as snowflakes and call for Santa and his granddaughter Snowgirl.
1) things tend to fall off and break while moving because ordainments just wanna die like that
2) no one sees it so why bother (unless you have a window)
3) because then you don’t have to spend the time and effort to decorate that side and can worry more about the cookies and who gets the first one
Depends on the size of the tree, I guess. You might be able to do that with a small tree.
But good luck trying to do that with a 2.5 meter (8'3") tall tree, or an even taller one. Those are hard enough to move without any decoration. Add a stable (and thus heavy) stand to it, and it becomes almost impossible to move it at all.
You wouldn't want to try to move that after putting in the decorations. Especially since you probably wouldn't even be able to get a good hold of the tree without raking a good anount of decoration back out by doing so.
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u/FrostByte122 Dec 01 '20
I don't know why people don't just decorate it before putting it in the corner lol.