I wish I had a picture of one of our Christmas trees from my youth. We would go with Dad and somewhere on our property, he would always find the perfect tree. Once we got it back, he would nail the two flat pieces of wood to the bottom for the platform. Then, it was time to make the decorations. Mom would have a huge bowl of popcorn in her lap. My brother and I sat on each side of her. We'd pick out the pieces of corn and she would string them with her needle and thread. It ended up as a long snake made of popcorn that Dad would string around the tree. He would start at the top and wrap it and droop it as needed until we gave the approval. Then, my brother and I would cut out a bunch of cardboard stars. Next, they were wrapped in aluminum foil (an extravagance for us poor people at the time). Dad would punch a hole in each and hang them as directed by my brother and I. I always wanted mine towards the top. My brother didn't care where his went as long as he could see them. We had some tinsel icicles that were carefully placed on the branch tips around the tree. The tree topper was always hand made. It would be some humongous cardboard star that my brother and I did together. After it was carefully wrapped with aluminum foil, Dad would wired it to the top. Mom, being a seamstress, always had some sort of white gauzy cloth that she would carefully wrap around the bottom of the tree. Christmas cards would be hung on a string that Dad had attached to one wall. Until I was 7 or 8, Dad would get up on the roof and stomp around. Mom would tell us it was Santa waiting for us to go to bed. 'Course, we'd hit it quick when we heard that. We had already left the required cookies ad milk out for him. One year, when we had a lot of snow at Christmas, my brother and I were amazed to see the reindeer tracks in the yard along with the sleigh tracks and sleigh tracks on the roof. Found out much later that Dad had climbed the roof and dragged a piece of lumber to make the tracks.
On Christmas morning, our gift booty included socks, underwear, homemade candy and one toy each. We shared, so we had two. I didn't realize until later how hard those two people had to work to come up with two gifts during those times.