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The first thing to be considered is how to obtain a suitable tree.

If you are not near any woods, and intend to purchase an evergreen from a nursery of trees, the “silver fir” is decidedly the best adapted for that purpose. In the large cities, trees of all kinds can be easily bought; they are carried through the streets for sale. If you go to the woods, the common spruce is the most suitable. The hemlock is the prettiest green, but its boughs are not sufficiently firm to bear any considerable weight. If a spruce cannot be found, hemlock can be used by nailing narrow slats of wood across the tree and under the branches, as a support. Paint the slats green, and they do not show; in that way candles and presents can be firmly fastened to its branches.

If the tree is not perfect in shape, nail on here and there an extra branch, until it becomes symmetrical.

Take a small round tub, or half of a small cask. Place your tree in the centre and brace it firmly, and fill the cask with sand. Cover the cask with green moss; it is the prettiest green for the purpose. It can be covered with little branches of hemlock if moss cannot be procured, or even a green floor mat can be placed around it. Another simple way to fasten a tree firmly, is to take a suitable block of wood, and have a hole made in the centre just to fit the stem of the tree, and cover the block with moss, or paint it. Then place your tree either in the centre or corner of your room where it is to be, first spreading a white cloth over the floor, which will not only protect your carpet, but add to the brilliancy of your tree when it is lighted. Some use a small tree, and place it in the centre of a table; the presents too large and heavy for the tree, are placed upon the table. When your tree is firmly placed in the right position, fasten on your candles with little tins, cut in the form of a diamond, with two very acute angles, and bent in the centre to form a right angle; push one point into your tree, and on the other fasten your candle or taper. The latter is the prettiest, and neatest to use. Buy the colored wax tapers. If you prefer you can cut up candles. Tapers or candles can be fastened also to your trees by wires, or by melting one end of the candle, and while hot, fasten it by the melted wax to the branch of the tree. Also you can purchase tins prepared to hold the tapers, made with a sharp point to fasten to the tree, and one to put in the taper; that point must be heated before fastening it to the candle. This tin has a hollow rim around it to catch the melted wax.

Trees can be lighted with gas, by unscrewing the centre gas chandelier, and fastening on a gas pipe reaching to the floor, with branches or arms of different lengths, according to the size of the tree, longer at the bottom, shorter at the top. Fasten your tree firmly close to the centre pipe; the branches of the tree should hide it. The branches of the gas-pipe should be wound with gold or green paper, and the branches of the tree placed, if possible, over them. This makes a brilliant tree, and is much easier to light, and does not require to be constantly watched. But wax tapers are more appropriate.

When your tree is firmly fastened and the lights all arranged, hang on your ornaments with wires and ribbons, commencing with the top of the tree first.

We will give a few simple directions for making ornaments, which may be useful to those who cannot afford to purchase.

To form gilded balls, take nuts, such as walnuts, filberts, and English walnuts (the latter nut can be opened and filled with anything you please, and then glued together again). Fasten a long tack or nail into the end of the walnut to hold it by, and afterwards to suspend to the tree. Wash the nut all over with the white of an egg, laid on with a feather. Then roll it in leaf gold till it is well covered. Be careful you do not breathe over the leaf gold, or it will fly away from you. A cheaper way is to take a sheet of gold paper, and cut a piece sufficiently large to cover the nut. Brush it with paste, then fasten it round the nut, rolling it over and over in your hand, to fill in every crevice. Apples covered with gold paper look very tempting; a smooth-skinned apple, of medium size, can be used, and the gold paper should be cut in sections, so that it will fit the apple smoothly.

Pretty little ornamental bags can be made of English walnuts. After the shells are well cleaned, varnish and paint or gild them in stripes, then bore holes in each half shell at the top and bottom, and fasten them together with narrow ribbon. Another prettier way is to take pieces of colored silk or ribbon, and fasten together at the side, then take half of one side of a nut, and glue the silk firmly all around the inside edge; hem the top of the silk and run in a string, or simply take strong saddlers’ silk and run all around, to draw it up. Thus is formed a pretty bag, which can be filled with candy; lace bags, filled with candy and parched corn, are ornamental. Take oblong pieces of coarse lace, run into the meshes bright colored worsted, then fasten them into a bag firm with the same worsted, and draw them up at the top with worsted. Birds’ nests add to the attraction of the tree. Take some halves of unboiled egg-shells; dip them in white of egg (but first you must have some moss ready), make a hollow of moss in your hand, and put the half shell in it. The moss will adhere to the outside. Take care that your moss be thick enough to hide the white of the shell. Line the inside with down or cotton wool, and put sugar-plum eggs in it. These nests look charming in the dark foliage of a tree. Small flags are a great addition; we would suggest that flags made to represent the national banner of other nations would be pleasant work for both boys and girls, illustrations of all of which can be found in any large atlas.

For horns of candy, get some white cartridge paper, cut squares, ornament them with pictures, mottoes, gold, silver, and fancy paper; shape them into a horn, and paste them firmly; cut off the top point and bind the rim with paper or ribbon, also paste on a loop of ribbon to fasten to the tree, and fill them with candy.

Glittering crystals, made of alum, are very pretty. To make them, dissolve alum in hot water until it will hold no more, then strain it off. Then take bonnet wire and form little baskets, sprays of leaves, little wreaths, or make the wreaths of tiny sprigs of spruce, fir, or take raisin stems (a slightly rough surface is necessary), suspend these by a network of string tied across the top of a deep basket; the dissolved alum must cover each article entirely; let them remain undisturbed over night. Remove them carefully the next morning, and you will find them glittering with minute crystals, resembling diamonds. If powdered turmeric is added to the hot alum solution, the crystals will be bright yellow. Litmus will cause them to be of a bright red. Logwood will turn them purple. The more muddy the solution the finer will be the crystals.

Sprays of mock coral, also tiny baskets of the same material, add to the tree’s beauty. To make them, take bright red sealing-wax, powder it, and dissolve it in alcohol. Then take your twigs, sprays, or anything you wish to imitate coral, and dip them in the above mixture until they are well dyed.

Baskets made of moss and filled with natural flowers, add a fresh beauty to the tree. Balls made of cake, and frosted all over, look like snow balls. Pop corn balls make quite a show. Bits of cotton wool, covered with diamond powder, and scattered over the tree, imitate snow.

Take gold paper, cut it in strips a quarter of an inch wide, and an inch and a half long. Take one of the strips and fasten together with paste, forming a ring; then take another strip and pass it through the ring just formed, and fasten it together with paste; continue this process until you have made a long chain. A number of these chains, festooned from branch to branch, resemble chains of gold.

Fairies always please children, and are easily made. Purchase some small, jointed wooden or china dolls, and different colored tarlatans for dresses, and form the wings of white tarlatan, or of white linen banking paper. Take butterfly wings for a pattern; sew on gold and silver spangles on dress and wings, or paste on tiny stars of gold and silver paper. Cut little strips of gold paper, and roll them up, as you do paper lamp-lighters, for the wands. Fasten them with thread or wire to the hand of the fairy. The crown of the queen can be made of gold paper, cut in strips long enough to go round the head, and cut it in points in front, and paste it round the head. Fasten wire round the waists of the fairies, leaving one long end to wind around the branches of the trees. Thus they look as if they were flying.

Many pretty things can be made from egg-shells, such as pitchers, bowls, goblets, and tiny cradles; ornament them with gold paper and little colored pictures.

There are hundreds of little glittering toys, which can be purchased for a few pennies, such as brass beads, little looking-glasses, glass balls, gilded toys, &c., too numerous to mention; odd bits of tin hung among the branches glitter very prettily.

Every member of a family preparing a Christmas tree, should use his or her wits to contrive little inexpensive ornaments; even the little ones, with some instruction, can make many pretty things, and it will add tenfold to their pleasure to feel they have assisted in ornamenting their precious tree; only let them think they can do it, and most assuredly it will be done.

In making presents, every member of the family should strive to find out the wants and tastes of those to whom they intend to give presents, thinking only of giving pleasure, and not of personal gratification of their pride or love of show. The golden rule our blessed Saviour gave us should be ever uppermost in our minds. Love should be the presiding genius of every home festival.

God works upon our hearts in many and various ways. Often the simplest thing in life may awaken us to a right sense of his goodness and mercy. So in home influences, if a Christmas tree every year can add one link to the chain which binds us in love to one another, should we not be paid for weeks of labor? Every child thus early taught thoughtfulness for others, must feel the good effects through life.