Weird or Tacky Ornament Shout Out

I have some food ornaments: some made from food boxes as a kid (teddy bear in a raisins box), some old dried gingerbread ornaments, and a small wooden orange.

I got Mr. Maxwell a xenomorph ornament a few years back. That's probably the weirdest one we have.

As a little girl, my mom bought me a collection of Sesame Street ornaments, with each character doing something wintery, like sledding or skating. We also had a set of white reindeer doing acrobats: five or six that you put in a row and they were doing a somersault, and a handful that hung on trapezes.

My favorites, though, are a pair of little books. Like, actual books with readable pages. One's got Christmas songs in it, and the other has a story of a bunch of toys repairing an old, torn teddy bear for Christmas. They're not tacky, but they are unusual, hanging books on a tree.

Let's see, we've got -

• Palm Trees dressed up as Xmas trees solely because we're Futurama fans
• About 20 Simpsons ornaments
• A variety of rocket ships
• A burrito and a taco
• A porcelain unicorn (that I got as a kid and is my favorite thing in the universe)
• Several superheroes
• The entire Mickey Mouse crew as their A Christmas Carol selves (given to me as a kid by ... someone?)
• A whole lot of penguins
• A few sparkly top hats
• And one very rotund snowman that wouldn't be tacky except for the fact that "Snowmen are Cool" is written across its belly.

No real story goes with most of them. Spouse-face and I just like kitsch and tacky ornaments. They play well with my bead garland that looks like starlight mints.

ETA: Oh, and I'm adding one more as a gift to spouse-face this year (don't tell 'em!) - BMO from Adventure Time

I have a fetish for Christmas tree ornaments. The stranger the better. But they also have to look "pretty" -- glass, sequined, or beaded. No drab plastic or cast resin. (I've broken that rule a couple of times though.) This year, I added to the collection with a blown glass little white dog in a Wonder Woman costume, and a Bassett Hound in a wedding dress.

The most unusual one, though, is a Zapatista from Mexico.

I have a ton of homemade/handmade ornaments my kids gave me, each one more horrible than the next (though I still cherish them). All the ornaments they made in school.

Globs of hardened clay, painted haphazardly with random glitter-glue accents

Picture frames made of Popsicle sticks

Foam Christmas train with pieces pealing off of it

Something that was once an orange with a ton of these spiky, scented cloves sticking out of it.

unidentifiable Lego creations

and many, many more.

I just so happens, however, that I have Ornament OCD. I demand uniformity in color, consistency in design, and an even distribution among the branches. So, I keep the kid-gifted ornaments in a 'special box so they won't get broken' and instead decorate the tree exactly as I want it. A place for every ornament and every ornament in its place. Only white lights. White, silver, turquoise and blue decorations. Crystal icicle garland, hand-crocheted snowflakes and large blue 'poinsettia' flowers among the branches. The children are finally allowed to help decorate it, now that they are teenagers and don't want to.

We have a Doctor Who tree in our loft, complete with a Weeping Angel tree-topper.

I have a little black Christmas tree with a string of plastic pearls for garland, and is decorated completely in, you guessed it, spider ornaments. Even the tree topper is a web with a gold and white beaded wire spider in it. I made every one of them.
Hubby refers to it as my blasphemous Christmas tree.

Our regular tree is in the living room. Basic green, multi-colored lights, angel on top. About 50% of the ornaments are handmade, either by me, or the kids.

There are some keepsake ornaments we were given over the years, like Luke Skywalker, and the little pink polka-a-dotted kitten from Strawberry Shortcake (That one is mine. Bet you didn't see that one coming )

A set of holiday themed stuffed felt teddy bears with embroidery that I made from a kit I was given.

The usual homemade kids ornaments. Tissue paper wreathes, cut out shaped scratch art, candy cane reindeer (and every single one is broken. I think only one made it onto the tree this year).

The little felt, sequin, and bead covered wreathes and Santa boots. Those are the ones the cats go for, so every year I have a heart attack, wondering how many of the little pins that hold the beads in will end up in a cat's stomach.

There are NO glass ornaments on our tree. Too many critters and kids running amok.

We were just talking about this--our tree is a sight to sore your eyes.

We have a minion, the beatles, a BB8 droid, wooden mushrooms and elf-ed versions of ourselves, to name a few.

New this year are photo blocks with old family Christmas pics and edible gingerbread cookies.

ETA:
Wicked, your avatar is truly wicked--eeeeeek!!!

Wicked said:

I have a little black Christmas tree with a string of plastic pearls for garland, and is decorated completely in, you guessed it, spider ornaments. Even the tree topper is a web with a gold and white beaded wire spider in it. I made every one of them.
Hubby refers to it as my blasphemous Christmas tree.

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We have a Doctor Who tree, a Barbie tree, and the big tree, which has everything from handmade art ornaments to stuff my kid made in preschool to lots and lots of pop culture: Elvis, Star Wars, Star Trek, Disney, Simpsons, Planet of the Apes, Superman, Batman, the overflow Doctor Who and Barbie ornaments that wouldn't fit on the smaller trees, etc.

I did originally object to having villains on the tree, which didn't seem appropriate to the season, but I got voted down by my boys and so Darth Vader and the Daleks got to stay.

And of course, we have the original Star Trek talking ornament.

Leonard Nimoy saying "Shuttlecraft to Enterprise. Shuttlecraft to Enterprise. Spock here. Happy Holidays. Live long and prosper."

On my tree I have about half a dozen different Grinch ornaments, a pink flamingo with a wreath around its neck (bought in Texas), Peter Pan on a sled, and Tinkerbell on a snowflake, wooden ornaments hand-carved by my father, and I also have about a dozen ornaments from the year my parents were married. I also have santas, because I collect those, and the perhaps oddest piece is a Partridge Family bus... that plays the theme song when you push on the doors. Oh, and mustn't forget the wee little plush frog... with a red and white striped scarf, and the Tim Bits snowman!

I'm all about the whacky and colourful. Two different colours of garland, multi-coloured lights... and every year I try to find an odd or unusual ornament to add to the collection. This year's addition is a small palm tree with lights wrapped around the trunk and a parrot sitting on top.

Myrealana said:

And of course, we have the original Star Trek talking ornament.

Leonard Nimoy saying "Shuttlecraft to Enterprise. Shuttlecraft to Enterprise. Spock here. Happy Holidays. Live long and prosper."

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Love this! I should put up two trees just for Star Trek and Star Wars ornaments! LOL

Most years, we have a multicolored fiberoptic Xmas tree. This year, it's a pink tinsel lighted tree - currently with a Death Star topper (the Hallmark one that lights up in different colors and plays the Imperial March.)

As for weird and tacky ornaments, we have many - several of which I'm directly responsible for, as making holiday ornaments for relatives has been a "thing" I've done for 20-odd years. (I didn't actually start making them for immediate family, let alone myself, until much more recently due to workspace constrictions - when I started, I had a TV dinner tray in my room, which became a corner of the dining room table when I got cats and needed a cat-proof place to sculpt and paint.)

Some highlights, with Photobucket links for the bored:

Hummingbirds (last year, honoring my late great-aunt; she died in her garden, after which an oddly abundant number of hummers frequented the site. Also the year I switched from Paperclay to Apoxie.)

Appalachian Dulcimers (the year before, honoring my late grandfather, who made many musical instruments)

Glittered, glow-in-the-dark carousel animals (with "night view" - these were great fun to make. The only way to be sure the "white" glow paint covered evenly was to charge it, turn off the lights, and paint in the dark. It was as awesome as it sounds...)

Canopic Jars (honoring the King Tut exhibit we saw that year - some artistic license taken)

Generic Tacky Shapes (just 'cause...)

More Generic Tacky Shapes (different year)

A Banana Slug - Side Shot (inspired by seeing a TV special on how banana slugs could drop from tree canopies on slime trails to avoid sun dessication... how could any PNW native not make a banana slug ornament after seeing that?)

And so on and so forth...

There are also some traditional ornaments, such as the "clothespin" unicorns (unicorns made with some manner of old-fashioned clothespin - bought them ages ago at local stores, and you never see them anymore.)

As for the holiday spider tree someone mentioned upthread, there's actually a legend of the Xmas spider.

I found a few more while decorating the tree! Most unusual is a blown glass sushi roll, and a glass coffee package and to-go coffee cup. This year I decorated the tree with all my favorite things.

I have a real ecclectic mix of ornaments, though none quite as "fun" as the boob mermaid described in the OP. Since I studied lizards in grad school, I have a number of lizard ornaments. I also have several dog and cat ornaments. I've got a set of wooden ones that look like different species of fish (bass, trout, perch ect.). There's also a limited edition Star Trek Next Generation ornament (a hotly contested prize from a long-ago gift exchange from a holiday party) that dates back to the 80s. It features Lt. Commander data at his console.

But by far the tackiest one in my collection was a gift from the cousin who is also my best friend. It is a carefully molded pile of dog poo (done in some kind of resin and hand painted just the right shade of brown), delicately frosted with white glitter (as if the pile had been sitting out in the snow for a while) and garnished with a bright, red bow. It gets pride of place each year I set up a tree.

I wish I could include shots of some of our stranger ones, but alas, they're boxed up in the garage, because we aren't doing a tree this year.

Brightdreamer said:

As for the holiday spider tree someone mentioned upthread, there's actually a legend of the Xmas spider.

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Those are the little beaded ornaments I make. In fact I was making some last night. My daughter wanted one for her math teacher, done in his favorite sports teams colors, for the tree in his classroom, and another for her bus driver.

I used to make them for all my friends and family, and send them along with the story printed out on holiday paper. Unfortunately I lost that version of the story when my computer crashed.

We do this thing where we buy one or two new ornaments for every vacation. The best ones are our collection of Henry VIII, his wives, and his daughter Elizabeth (apparently, there's no ornament of Bloody Mary). We don't have them all yet, but we've been buying one every time we go to England since I was a kid. We go a lot because I have family there, including my brother. They're the best. The only problem is the wives all look identical, except for dress colour. It's a challenge to remember who's which colour haha

Maggie Maxwell said:

My favorites, though, are a pair of little books. Like, actual books with readable pages. One's got Christmas songs in it, and the other has a story of a bunch of toys repairing an old, torn teddy bear for Christmas. They're not tacky, but they are unusual, hanging books on a tree.

Click to expand...

We have a little book, too! It's of nursery rhymes, but is so old that the pages are taped together. And some of them aren't in the current zeitgeist. For good reason. Yeah.

I don't know that any of ours qualify as weird or tacky, although some are totally shabby. We haven't put a tree up since 2009. My Dad and his cat moved in with us in 2010. She is big (16 pounds) and nosy. I know she would be up on the table, checking out the tree and many breakable ornaments. Dad has been gone almost 3 years, but she's still here. Probably won't have a tree till she's gone. And she's only 9, so I may never have another tree.

MM

I have a couple that could be considered weird, and possibly tacky, but I love them and want a whole tree full - this woman makes ornaments by dipping leaves and pinecones in metallic stuff. The leaves get all lacey because most of the leaf dissolves in the heat. It's kinda weird hanging preserved tree parts on a tree, but there's something about it, heh.

During the early years of marriage, owning nothing except 1930's electrocution light strings (never plug them in), spouse and I would pick up ornaments where we were traveling. A few were beautiful, German hand created birds and creatures done in feathers. Over the years the cats would climb the trees to kill the birds. Then the dogs would help. After thirty or forty years they looked like roadkill, feathers sticking out in unnatural directions. Hooks were stuck in as the originals were long gone, in places hooks should not be. Those started out as fine ornaments and ended their little lives as chewed up roadkill. But not thrown away yet. There are still a few feathers left.

A star trek ornament that plays the voice of Mr.Spock saying, "Live long and prosper. Merry Christmas."
My husband presses the little button at various times of the day. And night.