Don’t panic, folks, we are doing a photo essay of the Panucci/Larch Christmas Tree this year.  I’m just posting it later than usual because I wanted to save the easy stuff for me to post in the blog this week.

As with last year, we decided to go a bit low-key this Christmas, and not bury the tree under the many year’s worth of ornaments that we’ve accumulated.  So we gave the Batman, Walking Dead and most of the Beatles ornaments the year off, and stuck with new stuff that we got this year, and some of the classier ornaments we’ve acquired in our travels. We figure we’ll be rotating ornaments from now on, unless we add another tree…or trees…to the mix in the future.

In the captions below the photos, I’ll tell you a bit about what you’re looking at, and in some cases explain where we got the featured ornaments.  It’s a pop culture-heavy tree, which is what makes it a natural for coverage in PopCult.

I didn’t do a video this year because I’ve got too much other pre-holiday stuff to do. If you’d like to see what video would look like, call up this post on your phone, and move it around a bit.

Giving credit where it’s due, Mel did almost all of the decorating. I just brought the tree down from the attic.

Now, onto the pics…

In this photo you see our new alien ornament, an old astronaut and a rocket, Mel’s picks from The Walking Dead and SpongeBob Squarepants, a Beatles ornament and new to our tree is a star-shaped plush Santa that was used on my mother’s DayCare center Christmas tree, which had been packed away for over 25 years.

Here you get a better view of the new alien, plus a brontosaurus, Buc ee Beaver, a Mold-A-Rama choir angel, and at the bottom, three Chicago ornaments–the Bean, Christkindlmarket 2021 and The Water Tower.

More SpongeBobbery, plus disco balls, a rubber duck and two tiny ornaments that came in Kinder Surprise chocolate eggs.

Here you see our old alien, Santa, a wooden Knight with reflex action, a Trader Vic’s Pineapple Mug and an accordian.

Another Trader Vic’s ornament shows up here. This time it’s the rum barrel. Also, our Aquabats ornament and an L train.

Mel became enamoured of the Santa Fe “Warbonnet” Diesel engine, so I found her an ornament of it made by Lionel. You can also see one of our robots and that new alien again.

Mel found this cool, translucent Peacock on our trip to Chicago a couple of weeks ago. It echoes our topper this year.

As seen in our feature image, three new additions are front and center our the tree: Betty Page (from Retro A Go Go), Trader Vic’s Orchid Island canoe, and Buc ee. Another, much heavier, Buc ee ornament was added after I took these photos. Mel will continue rearranging, adding and subtracting ornaments until we take the tree down, sometime next year. Maybe as late as March, if things dont slow down around here. 🙂

Here we see our Moai, plus more SpongeBobbery and a little Pusheen stuff.

This year’s Christkindlemarket ornament is shaped like a pretzel haus. Plus theres the L again.

Some small, random ornements, all returning from years past.

A view of the middle of the tree, showing off the new alien and peacock again. Plus that’s a new SpongeBob.

Birds and squirrels, plus a cool tiny hot air baloon that I picked out.

Another look at our tree-topper, which I painted for you in Monday Morning Art this week. As with many of the glass ornaments on the tree, this came from Frank’s Ornament Haus at Christkindlmarket, which has already wrapped for this year, due to the arctic blast heading our way.

And there is our tree, head to toe, with the background blurred so you’re not distracted by the clutter.

And with that, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from PopCult.