O Lego tree, o Lego tree ...

... your candles kept falling ohoff, o Lego tree, o Lego tree, they really drove me nuhuuts."
Actually, this project went rather quickly. Although some of the steps had to repeated for the different branch levels, it wasn't boring at all, maybe because I did it in several rather short sessions.
If you wonder, I let den Dekan join me in two of them, but the first time I forgot to take the camera to the table and he left me when I went to get it, and the second time I had the camera, but the batteries decided to die just that moment when I was about to take a picture of him checking the bags.
As there wasn't a box for him to sit in, he got bored rather quickly and left the room after making my desk chair crash by trying a new wide jump record from its top.

Here's the tree now. I really like it.
At one point, I thought I had make a big mistake and took the single levels apart from one another, but in the end I found that it needed an open ring instead of a plate in one spot (which absolutely made sense if you're not a numpty like me 🤪).
You can make one big tree or a smaller and a really small one, therefore there are pieces left over and I had grabbed the wrong one.
And of course I kept losing the candles until I finally got smart enough to leave them off until the end.
If you make the two trees, one of them has the candles and the other has all the baubles, red and other colors. On the big one, the baubles are all red per the instructions. Not on mine. I put them where I found space. Much better.

When exactly the tradition of the Christmas tree in private homes began isn't known. It was not unusual for different cultures to bring evergreen into the houses in winter.
There are several records for fir trees being put up without them being called Christmas trees explicitly before, but in 1527 the term turns up in an existing document.
Whatever the exact year is, the Christmas tree had been around in German speaking regions for a long time.

Since the mid-18th century, it was mentioned more and more, and in the 19th century, the tradition had already spread to Austria and then went to New England, England, France, Italy, The Netherlands, and Russia.
At first, trees were decorated with sweets, apples and nuts some of which were painted in silver and gold. The children were then allowed to plunder the edible decorations off the tree.
The legend goes that a glassblower in Lauscha, a town which is still known for its glass art and Christmas ornaments - which now come in all kinds of shapes from traditional to very modern - couldn't afford apples and nuts for his tree and made them from glass instead. True or not, the first written record of glass ornaments is in an order book from 1848.

You may also have heard the idea to hang a Christmas tree from the ceiling - upside down to save space - for example to discourage pets from getting into it.
That's actually not a new idea, but I don't even want to get into the theories who did it first or maybe not or why.
It's not something I'm going to be doing as I have high ceilings and have no interest at all at having someone put a hook up there for me, but mostly I just don't like the look. I want my tree on the ground where der Dekan and Gundel can wreak havoc easily. It's fun for the whole family, and after I made sure they can't get caught in the string of lights, I'm fine with picking up gnomes and "pineapple slices" all the time even if I moan a lot about it!

This picture is from last year,
I'm behind with my tree decorating.

I am not affiliated with Lego in any way, except playing with it every, now and then.