HOLIDAYS IN THE VALLEY : Old Is New : Ornaments: This season’s Christmas trees will take their cues from grandma’s house. The lean economy has forced us to simplify our lives, and people are reaching back to times when things were better.

The romance has definitely not gone out of Christmas--in fact, it’s taken hold with a vengeance. If last year’s Tannenbaum trimmings leaned toward the Victorian--dolls, doves, hearts and ribbons, with plenty of Santas thrown in--this season’s best-dressed trees will take their cues more specifically from grandma’s house. German glass hummingbirds and fruit baskets will mingle with apple-cheeked cherubs, tiny violins and old-fashioned radios, all lit by diminutive hurricane lamps or electric candles.

“Last year we saw a more stylized Victorian Christmas decor,” says Jeani Wade, co-owner of Christmas International at the Promenade Mall in Woodland Hills. “This year, there’s a lot of feeling and immediacy. It’s more emotional than aesthetic.”

The nostalgia for what Chuck Walker, co-owner of Paper Goose in Glendale, Studio City and Woodland Hills, calls “memories of family and old-world traditions,” is based, those in the business say, on our lean economy, which has forced us to look homeward and simplify our lives.

“We’re getting away from glitz and gold lame and things that say, ‘I’m rich,’ ” says Mike Folino, manager of Van Nuys-based Aldik Silk Flowers and Gifts. Four out of Aldik’s five new lines of Christmas ornaments are romantic in tone because, Folino believes, “People are thinking back to a time when things were better.”

Take this sentiment, mix it with other contemporary concerns--patriotism, babies, domesticity, the environment and health--and you have Christmas ‘91, hardly a radical departure from Yuletide a year ago.

Here are a few of the newest stars on the holiday horizon, along with some updated old favorites.

GERMAN GLASS

* Perhaps no other kind of ornament represents our yearning for a simpler era as powerfully as the grape clusters, silver drums and jauntily perched birds whose precursors actually did hang on many a grandparent’s tree. Hand-blown and generally priced from $5 to $15, these contemporary copies of old designs are cruder than the originals, and the new hummingbirds sport sleek synthetic-plume tails in place of the once thrillingly dangerous spun glass. But few Christmas aficionados over 30 will fail to recognize these tinkly trinkets that were old even way back when, and as much a part of the season as rainbows of ribbon candy.

AMERICAN HERITAGE

* In addition to looking to Europe for the roots of happier, simpler times, the public is also casting around this continent, according to Paper Goose’s Walker.

Plaid bows and painted twigs, along with what Walker calls “a Pacific Northwest mountain kind of influence,” are all part of “Americans trying to find themselves within America.”

In Walker’s stores, primitive, folk-art stars, flags and schoolhouses from Iowa range from $2.75 to $8.50.

Another aspect of the looking-for-America trend, which Walker cites as “not brand new but revitalized this season,” is a “back to the Waltons” country theme, exemplified by wooden and pottery ornaments in the shapes of pigs, cows and cowbells, which are $4.50 to $12.

Also significant are tree trimmings that proclaim patriotism in the wake of the war in the Middle East.

“We’re going to see lots of red, white and blue trees this year,” Walker predicts.

Kari Anderson, manager of Mrs. Anderson’s, a Christmas shop with branches in the Northridge, Topanga and Thousand Oaks malls, adds that the public is particularly interested in items made in the United States.

Almost everything at Mrs. Anderson’s, which specializes in clay and bread-dough ornaments, is domestically manufactured.

AMERICAN INDIAN

* Spotted at one store only--Rubber Boots in Toluca Lake--but very popular there, drums, figures and fetishes decorated with Native American motifs may be another form of the exploring-America theme, or they may represent the weariness of certain consumers with the ghosts of Christmas past.

“People like these ornaments for their workmanship,” says assistant store manager Geri Berger of the often hand-carved and colorfully painted pieces, which are $8.50 to $22. “They also like them because they’re different. They’re a novelty.”

Fashioned of wood, leather or metal, the objects definitely stand out from the general run of things, and they contribute a certain timeless, talismanic spirit that draws one’s touch, inexorably, through the fir boughs in their direction.

BABY BOOM

* Many people have gone over the deep end where their infants are concerned.

As Jeani Wade of Christmas International points out, baubles celebrating baby have been around for some time. But they are out in greater force this season, with imaginative variations abounding: storks wearing Santa hats; matchbox-sized mobiles sporting angels and rocking horses; bears sitting on blocks, in chairs, and on balls. Usually priced from about $5 to $15, most come from the Orient and are made of porcelain, plastic, wood, fabric or paper. Many proclaim “Baby’s first Christmas,” or “Baby’s second Christmas,” or just broadcast baby’s name.

“People are even decorating entire little trees for their baby’s room,” says Wade. She adds dryly, “This year, there are just more babies out there.”

TROLLS

* You won’t see them everywhere, but when you do, there will be hordes of them--the pot-bellied ragamuffins with the hungry eyes and electromagnetic hair that stuck up out of every school child’s backpack during the ‘60s. For their holiday comeback, they’re wearing Santa suits and elf caps, or sporting blue dye jobs and stars of David on their chests.

“They’re ugly but they’re cute” is the only explanation Wade can come up with for the thunderous popularity of the little creatures, which hail from China and sell at her store for $4.99, $8.99 and $25.

GARDEN IMPLEMENTS

* Miniature rakes, hoes and spades, pint-sized terra-cotta pots stuffed with dried flowers--these symbols of cultivated landscape seem to flow from two of our current obsessions. One is for all things domestic, the other for the environment at large. Staying home instead of going out--a byproduct of recessionary times--is leading many people to discover that they have gardens, and that in California those areas can be developed into lush, year-round extensions of indoor space.

This, according to Chuck Walker, along with the push for “environmental awareness--the greening of the earth, recycling, the whole natural movement”--has led some to want to hang their tools on the tree. At Paper Goose, these come from China and cost $6.50. Terra-cotta pots and cherub faces--the kind that might decorate a garden wall--are made in Oregon and range from $8.50 to $12.

HEALTH FOOD

* One of the signs of how extensively the national mania--or at least the Southern California mania--for fitness has infiltrated our lives is the presence of lifelike fruit and vegetables alongside the angels at Christmas. Do bananas and carrots belong among the evergreens? Consumers seem to think so, and are snapping up apples, watermelons and some of their other colorful cousins at a healthy pace.

Wade, who sells ersatz produce fashioned of delicate German glass for $7.99 to $12, attributes its appeal to “the fact that it combines an Old World look with our current concerns.”

True health nuts, however, may want to stay away from one of the most eye-catching items in the faux food collection: an iridescent, sodium-rich pickle.

TRADITIONAL SWEDISH

* For the season of St. Nicholas, there’s not much new this year at IKEA in Burbank--nor, says Pernille Lopez, West Coast sales manager for IKEA’s Marketplace, will there ever be. “There’s a basic Christmas feeling that has been carried through for generations in Scandinavia,” Lopez says. “It doesn’t change.”

What is changing is the receptivity of a jaded American public toward simple ornaments of wood, straw and brass, which, if they’re colored at all, come in two colors: red and green.

“People have been overwhelmed by trendiness,” Lopez feels. “They want a back-to-basics, down-to-earth Christmas.” She adds that they also want to spend less, which enhances the appeal of IKEA’s imported, often handmade decorations, all priced in the $1 to $4.50 range.