Personalize Your Christmas Wreath This Year

A Christmas wreath is something you see on almost every door during the holiday season. For some people it is their only outdoor decoration and others go all out with lights and Santa Claus on the roof but still have that Christmas wreath on the door.

Add meaning to your Christmas wreath this year by decorating it with things you love. Buy a beautiful Christmas wreath and add your own decorations to it. Look around your yard and find natural decorations. If you have an oak tree you can gather up some of the oak nuts and attach them. You can use fishing line or a glue gun to attach the decorations to the wreath. Cut off a couple branches from your burning bush and add those.

If you are a bird lover, buy a few small stuffed birds at your local craft store to use on your wreath. Winter doves, cardinals and chickadees are favorites. If you love the ocean, add sea shells, sea urchin shells, starfish, sand dollars and other sea life like hermit crab shells. These all look beautiful displayed amongst the fresh balsam fir boughs of the Christmas wreath.

Sports lovers can add decorations for their favorite teams. A Boston Red Sox fan can add a small Red Sox pennant or other nick knack with the team logo on it. Tennis lovers can add a tennis ball and tennis racket ornaments. Everyone in the family can have their favorite sport or team represented. A golf ornament attached for Dad, tennis ornament for Mom, soccer ball for the kids and a Red Sox ornament for everyone.

Candy lovers can add small candy canes and hard candy. Visitors can help themselves and you can replenish the candy on the Christmas wreath as needed.

Consider adding fruit to your wreath. Red fruits like pomegranates, crabapples, sprigs of red pepper berries and of course, holly berries, look beautiful. Eucalyptus, magnolia, holly and amaryllis also look wonderful. Eucalyptus adds a pungent aroma to the fresh, fragrant scent of the balsam fir.

Add garland around your door and continue the decorating theme of your Christmas wreath on the garland. Put a family photo in a frame at the center of the garland above the door with your favorite holiday greeting beneath it. This adds a personal welcome from your whole family to all visitors.

Lights can also be added to Christmas wreaths. Buy a string of battery operated lights and string them through the wreath. Use your imagination to make your Christmas wreath unique and personal this year. It’s much easier if you start out with a fresh Christmas wreath and add your own decorations to it.

Lynn Jebbia is the owner of Acadia Wreath Company. Acadia Wreath Company, based in Bar Harbor, Maine, handcrafts fresh Maine balsam fir Christmas wreaths, Christmas Centerpieces and Kissing Balls which are shipped directly to customers and corporate clients throughout the United States.

Gathering Balsam Fir Tips for Maine Christmas Wreaths

Balsam fir is used to make Christmas wreaths and Christmas centerpieces in Maine because it is plentiful and makes beautifully fragrant wreaths. The tips of the branches are used which is the end portion. The tips are cut in lengths from 12 to 20 inches. One tip is normally broken into two or three pieces, bunched together and then wired onto the wreath ring.

Gathering the balsam tips is called tipping. Tipping can’t start until late fall after the needles are set which is normally after the first few frosts. After the needles are set the balsam fir tree will stop growing, staying dormant, until spring. The pores in the needles are sealed by a waxy coating that covers the needle’s surface. If tips are gathered before setting the needles fall off in a short time and can’t be used. In Maine, balsam brush shouldn’t be collected until after November 1 with a minimum of three consecutive 20 degree or colder nights.

To gather tips on privately owned forests the tippers have to get permission. Large corporations issue permits with fees for their property. Most wreath producers are very particular about the quality of the tips they purchase. It’s hard to produce a top quality wreath if you don’t have top quality balsam tips to start with. The tips should have needles on all sides of the tip’s stems appearing rounded. They should be a dark green color. They also should be free of any sign of insect damage.

The best quality tips come from the middle of the tree. The branches on the top of the trees oftentimes have long stems and the bottom branches usually only have needles on one side. Naturally, wreath producers purchasing tips are looking for the deep green, rounded tips that come from the middle of the trees.

After cutting the tips are stacked on a stick in alternate directions until the stick weighs between 50 and 75 lbs. with twine attached to the ends for carrying. They are then taken to be sold to the local wreath producers. The tips are sold according to their weight.

Global warming may have an adverse effect on the Christmas wreath industry in Maine if it continues as predicted. As the fall gets warmer and warmer it’s possible that we won’t have the needed frost to set the needles on the balsam fir trees until it’s too late for the Christmas season.

Lynn Jebbia is the owner of Acadia Wreath Company. Acadia Wreath Company, based in Bar Harbor, Maine, handcrafts fresh Maine balsam fir Christmas wreaths, Christmas Centerpieces and Kissing Balls which are shipped directly to customers and corporate clients throughout the United States.

Maine Christmas Wreath Industry

Maine is the largest producer of balsam fir Christmas wreaths in the United States. Millions of wreaths are shipped out every year. Maine’s forests cover over 85% of the state. A lot of this forest is available for harvesting of balsam fir tips which is a sustainable harvest. Only 12 to 20 inches of the ends of the branches are cut and they grow back year to year.

A wreath is made by attaching bunches of the balsam fir tips to a metal ring. The bunches of tips are wired to the ring. The common sizes for the wreath rings are 8,10, 12, 14 and 16 inch. The outside diameter of the wreath is determined by the size of the ring. For example, at Acadia Wreath Company, our 24” Christmas wreath is built on a 12 inch ring and our 30” Christmas wreath is built on a 16” ring. The amount of balsam tips needed for a wreath depends again on the size of the ring. We make very full, double-faced wreaths except for our vehicle wreath.

Our 24” wreath weighs about 6 lbs and our 30” wreath weighs about 8 lbs. A double-faced wreath has the balsam tips attached to both sides of the wreath ring making a much fuller wreath. We have a customer who has us decorate both sides of her wreath because she hangs it on a glass door where it can be seen from each side of the door. This wouldn’t work with a single-faced wreath with the balsam tips attached to only one side. Naturally, the single-faced wreaths are cheaper to make in materials and labor. Most of the major big box retailers sell single-faced wreaths.

The wreath industry in Maine includes tippers, wreath makers, wholesalers and retailers. Tippers (people who gather the tips) sell to a local wreath business or wreath maker. There is a large cottage industry of wreath makers who make wreaths at home and sell them, undecorated for the most part, to local wholesalers or retailers or directly to consumers.

The balsam fir tips are not only used to make Christmas wreaths. Christmas centerpieces, kissing balls, swags and garland are also made. Garland is not a huge part of the industry because wreath makers can make a lot more money making wreaths and so garland is harder to find. Demand for balsam fir Christmas products is increasing every year. It is the most fragrant of all the firs with the smell most associated with Christmas. Also, it’s natural and sustainable and artificial, plastic wreaths are viewed as tacky and they sure don’t smell like Christmas.

Lynn Jebbia is the owner of Acadia Wreath Company. Acadia Wreath Company, based in Bar Harbor, Maine, handcrafts fresh Maine balsam fir Christmas wreaths, Christmas Centerpieces and Kissing Balls which are shipped directly to customers and corporate clients throughout the United States.