Not Your Traditional Christmas Trees: 15 Trees That Will Make You Scratch Your Head

To me, Christmas is a time of family and friends.  Of giving and receiving.  A time for baking and singing carols and playing silly games half way into the night.  Christmas is a time for children and watching their eyes light up as they open something that they really wanted.  It's a time of laughing and drinking and eating too much.  And of course, the perfect back drop to all this merriment is the Christmas tree  It's green and tall and full.  It's full of twinkling lights and ornaments collected over the years.  You know, your traditional, average tree.

This is not what this article is about.  Instead, this article seeks to discover the bizarre, the unusual trees that people love (or maybe hate).  Christmas has become so commercialized, so materialistic.  It seems that major corporations and malls have bought and paid for our ideals of Christmas.  This article highlights some of those sorts of trees as well as trees bought at the Salvation Army and trees designed by artists and trees that are well, just different that the ones that I have in my house.

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These "upside down" trees were all the rage last year.  I guess they were designed so that you could place more presents at the bottom.  It also has the side effects of being harder for pets and kids to climb up on.  It just doesn't say Christmas to me somehow.  All the right parts are there but well, they're upside down!

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Here's a different take on a Christmas tree -- a bicycle sculpture all painted white.  It's definitely different.  Maybe it's a statement about environmental friendliness.  Instead of chopping down trees or driving SUV's, let's all use bikes!

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This strange little tree is tied to a fence literally in the middle of nowhere.  It's totally reminds me of Charlie Brown's Christmas tree.

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This intellectual's answer to the Christmas tree was created by Frank Visser of IJM.  Really cuts down on decorating costs and fuss.  Plus, there's no giant box to store at the end of it all or even worse, a sadly decomposing tree.

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This Christmas tree created last year was dubbed the world's most expensive Christmas tree.  It was created by Soo Kee Jewelery in Singapore and is worth over $1 million US dollars.  There were almost 22,000 diamonds on it totalling more than 900 carats.  It is truly a tree that looks like what it is worth -- outrageous and gorgeous!

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This modernist take on a Christmas tree was displayed at a Snow Festival in Sapporo, Japan.  The huge branches look a little bare to me.  Definitely a minimalist's Christmas tree.

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This is a picture of one of the biggest Christmas trees that I could find.  It is made up of 350 fake trees, each with decorations and lights.  These trees were then all placed together on a steel stand to make up this giant monstrosity over 60 feet tall!  All this to draw attention to a new company in China -- promoting the Yellow Pages of all things.

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So this is what $12 can buy you... a 6 foot, blue LED and fibre optic tree!  The tree itself is transparent purple, of course.  This just does not say "Christmas" to me somehow...  It actually looks more like some strange underwater creature than a Christmas tree!

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This conceptual Christmas tree was found in Toronto, ON Canada.  It consists of large light balls that are lit up at night.  I guess it looks better and more like Christmas when it's lit, as in the second picture.  It's still different than anything I've ever seen before!

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Here's the bachelor's answer to Christmas -- layers of empty beer bottles!  It actually looks surprisingly good considering what it's made of.  If you start drinking now, there might still be time to get this done!

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This one is a spinning Christmas tree that changes colors as it goes.  I had to attach two photos to show some of the different colors that it goes through.  It is apparently very mesmerizing.  I can't imagine how far it could shoot off ornaments though.

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Here's another weird conceptual Christmas tree made out of different colours of plastic tubing.  It's, um, well, unique.

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Instead of getting one of those weird upside down trees, why not just hang a regular tree from the ceiling?  You could use it instead of a light fixture in the stairwell.  I know this shot looks totally fake but apparently it isn't.  The light switch actually turned the tree lights on and off.  Clever.

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Okay, this looks like one of the creepy trees in the forest that Snow White takes off into when she's escaping from the Queen's hench man who was sent to kill her.  It does not say Christmas in any way at all to me.  Maybe more like the Nightmare before Christmas.

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And this is definitely the weirdest tree that I would find!  I like how her bright red lipstick actually matches the red ornaments.  I wonder how long it took to wire up her hair like this and twist it all into shape...  Sorta cool though in an artsy way.