Upside Down Christmas Trees

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A few years ago, our small design studio created an upside-down Christmas tree to jazz up the space for the holidays. People would stop in from the street to look at it and chat about it with us. It was a real hit. Now we see upside down trees popping up pretty commonly, like this 7' version from Hammacher Schlemmer...

Is it sacrilegious? Well, according to About.com, hanging fir trees upside down goes back to the Middle Ages, when Europeans did it to represent the Trinity.

How does this apply to the AT community? Well, an upside-down tree leaves more floorspace at its base. The inversion could actually help small apartment dwellers to squeeze the holiday tradition into their spaces. We think hanging one from the ceiling is the way to go: positioning it on a base would make the tree wobbly! Anyone have experience with turning a tree upside down?

Comments (23)

GIMME!!

Y'know... when I installed electrical outlets on the ceiling, everyone was laughing. Well... look now. (Yeah, some are still laughing.)

You gotta be kidding me.....

I actually think that's really great. At first I said WTF? But it's kinda cool. Christmas is so boring and monotonous. Time to do SOMETHING interesting.

Ummmm, no. Not cute.

Back in college my roommates and I went out to cut down our own tree on a friday night after doing things college students do on friday nights. In our tipsy state and with our very dimly lit flashlight we couldn't quite tell that the tree we picked was quite possibly the ugliest Christmas tree I had seen. We realized it when we brought it in the house and realized how sparse and weak the branches were. Any ornament weight would cause the branch to flex down. Not being ones to waste we decided that since we cut it we had to keep it. We turned it upside down to trim the bottom more square an realized it really filled out when upside down. Our tree hung from the ceiling that year.

I've been seeing these in catalogs (Frontgate, etc), for a few years. I think they look a little banquet hall-ish (especially that one above on the right), but I am not a big fan of artificial trees (I am making the assumption you can't do this with a real tree / can't water it..)

i'm not crazy about the ones in the photos here, but i was recently out at a local bar that's usually kind of over the top with their decor, and they had one hanging from their ceiling and it looked pretty cool in that space. it was a kind of funky-modern-shiny look, which i think lends itself better than the more traditional ornaments above. i think for the right place it's awesome!!

Many many years ago I tried to convince my roomates to hang a tree upside down. In the end we passed on it because we didn't want to mount the tree stand to the ceiling only to come home one day and find that gravity didn't agree with our little experiment. Plus, it seemed kinda anti-Christmas. And though we DID enjoy eyeliner and mascara, we knew we really weren't THAT Goth.

I love the one over the table though. It's like a beautiful chandelier that blocks your view of visiting relatives whom you'd rather not talk to.

I dunno about this one. This seems a bit like how satanists use upside down crucifixes or something. Yeah, I'm not sure about this one...seems kinda anti-Christmas.

I think it's all about personal taste, I personally don't like it. If I had a small space and could not decorate using a tree I'd try to decorate creatively.
What I'd like to see is how creative A.T. community is when decorating in their small spaces. That's if you celebrate! Would love to see pictures!

The one on the left looks a little like a ficus. Why not just use a ficus?

I've been seeing these for several years as well, but the idea has not grown on me. When it comes to Christmas, I am a bit of a traditionalist.

obnoxious. you don't need to be crafty with everything

groan...

I could go either way on it, though logistically I'm confused. The linked tree obviously is designed and planned to stand on its own but if I wanted to really do it myself? Do I just prune the tree so it LOOKS upside-down (as in the picture on the left)? Is the tree resorted to dying, as if you physically mounted a tree upside down how would you water it?

...Perhaps I'm thinking too much.

is because "that" store did everything upside down and we have to do it too? this is insanity!

Thank of all the floor space you save!

"Look at us, we're creative"

First off I have never watered any of the real Christmas trees we've had and they were all still looking good into the new year

Secondly, this also seems anti-Christmas to me - turning a symbol upside down in the standard way of saying you are against whatever the symbol stands for - if you're against Christmas don't put up a tree at all!

Thirdly, it does just seem like its trying too hard to be creative

Overall, horrible.

The main purpose for inverting a tree is to get your ornaments to hang better (oh my). Especially the longer ones (oh my).

It's why it started in stores, to showcase ornaments (and leave more counter space from which to sell 'em)... they hang in mid-air instead of being "lost" in the branches.

So what seems (according to y'all) as a satanic, overly crafty, drunk frat idea is actually a very practical solution to a retail display challenge.

And for those thinking this disrespectful, a reminder that the Christmas tree began as a pagan symbol, and has little or no relation to the religious aspects of the holiday at all, only through association.

Christmas trees started as a Lutheran German custom in the early 19th century. (Even my Catholic in-laws will concede that Lutherans aren't pagans.) Pagans certainly knew what trees were, but there's no documented connection between their hypothetical customs and the Christmas trees as we know them, just an urban legend dating from the 1920s, when inventing a pagan past was rather stylish in certain intellectual circles.

Ok, you win.