The iciest debate in Tinsel Town

The holidays, like superheroes, are known for their transformative powers. Misers go philanthropist, feuds turn into love-fests and irritating repetition becomes “tradition.” At this time of year, that word lends meaning to the most baffling family eccentricity, from regrettable punch-bowl consumption patterns to the inevitable holiday arguments.

In fact, most of the conversations occurring in Christian households between Thanksgiving and New Year’s range from friendly negotiation to foot-stamping fights. There’s just so much to decide. White lights or colored? Blinking or non-. Fake wreath or real? Scotch pine or Douglas? Flocked or plain? Does the family decorate it or Santa?

And then when you think it’s all been settled, when the house is ablaze with icicle lights and illuminated reindeer are nodding placidly on the front lawn, when the tree is up and decorated, it’s time to have the tinsel talk. When I was growing up, we called them “icicles,” and the conversation went something like this: “Let’s not put any icicles on this year.” My mother.

“What!?! No icicles? Why bother having a Christmas tree?!?” My father.

“All right, but just a little tinsel. Do it strand by strand. No clumps.”

Cue smothered knowing laughter from the children. Because my father was an unapologetic tinsel tosser. He believed in taking great handfuls of the stuff and simply throwing it at the tree, allowing it to fall “artistically.” The Jackson Pollock of tree trimming. “This way,” he would say, handing each of us gobs of silver, “it will look just like snow.”

By the time we were done, the ornaments were barely visible, the greenery undetectable by the naked eye. It was excessive but not unusual in our circle -- everyone we knew had the same sort of debate year after year, and everyone we knew tinseled to some degree or another.

But like so many traditions, the tinsel debate appears to be on the wane. According to the professionals, there is simply nothing to discuss.

“Tinsel is old-fashioned and messy,” says Abbas Sorbi, store manager for Stats in Pasadena, a holiday decorating mecca. “No one wants it anymore.” So few people have asked for it in the last couple of years, he says, that he stopped ordering it. “There is no tinsel in this store,” he says.

In decorating the 20 or so trees in the store’s magical tree room, Sorbi has used a lot of gold mesh instead. “It is very elegant,” he says.

Commercial trees -- the ones in hotel lobbies or town squares -- almost never have tinsel these days. Partly this is because it is messy and time-consuming to put on but also it is just not considered classy enough. Speaking via her cell phone from Las Vegas, where she was working on the holiday decorations for Treasure Island and the Bellagio, Laurie Resnick called tinsel “residential.” But in the nicest possible way.

As president of the Associate Group in Santa Ana, Resnick oversees the tree trimming and garlanding of high-end hotels, such as the Ritz-Carlton Huntington in Pasadena, and commercial thoroughfares, including Paseo Colorado. And she never, ever tinsels. “Our look,” she says, “is a little more elegant.”

That word again. And from a woman standing in the middle of Las Vegas. Still, it’s true that many home trees are taking their cue from the professionals: Theme trees, says Sorbi, are becoming more popular each year.

But some people still prize tradition over “elegance”: A random poll of various drug and discount stores revealed that tinsel is still available in Los Angeles, and if the baffled replies of “I guess,” from various clerks are to be believed, people are still buying it.

Which is a good thing. Yes, a tree dripping with tinsel looks more homemade than one bedecked in gold mesh and oversized themed ornaments. But that’s sort of the point. Tinsel has been around practically as long as the Christmas tree itself -- as early as 1612, silversmiths were beating the metal thin enough to cut into strips at yuletide. Every American has lurking somewhere a picture of their first Christmas tree, and dollars to doughnuts, that sucker’s tinseled.

So if bell-bottoms and bare midriffs have been recategorized from “hideous and out-of-date” to “retro-hip and groovy,” why not tinsel?

As a grown-up, I have never tinseled, neither have I themed. But this is the first Christmas since we lost my dad, and so, after we finished trimming our tree, we filled our children’s hands with silver. For the next 20 minutes, strands of tinsel flew through the air, covered the floor, the chair, the dogs.

And some of it actually stayed on the tree, where it glittered and shone just like snow.