If you remember the Christmases of the fifties and sixties - or if you just love the sleek and stylish retro modern look - you'll want to include some Retro Christmas classics in your holiday decor.

Make a bold, striking, and unmistakably retro statement with a metallic silver tree. A true fifties-sixties classic, the silver tree was often decorated in a single color theme. Try red rights and shiny red glass ornaments, or create a retro mood with all blue lights and decorations.

Tip: add some magic to your retro silver tree with a color wheel. Wildly popular during the 50s and 60s, a color wheel features transparent red, blue, orange and green inserts that rotate slowly in front of a regular incandescent light bulb. Placed so that the light is directed onto the tree, a color wheel creates an ever-changing play of light that adds a new dimension of fifties fun to your holiday decorating.

If silver isn't your style, bring retro flair to your Christmas tree with strings of large, multicolor lights. The tiny sparkly mini-lights that are today's standard didn't become common until the late sixties and early seventies; the tree lights of the retro years were big, bright, and bold.

Tip: Modern versions of old-fashioned large Christmas lights look just like the originals, but they feature one important difference: they're cool, safe, and reliable. If you grew up in the fifties or sixties chances are you remember burning the tips of your fingers on the lights, or perhaps you can recall painstakingly testing each and every light in a string that had gone "dead" because of of the bulbs burned out. Not a problem with modern retro replicas; they don't get hot and they're wired to keep going even if one bulbs goes bad.

For the ultimate in retro Christmas tree decorating, go for bubble lights. True retro Christmas icons, bubble lights were introduced in the mid 1940s and by the fifties they had become a wildly popular holiday novelty. Almost every household a string or two on the tree, and most people over 50 can remember waiting for the bubble lights to start bubbling.

Bubble lights basically consist of a thick glass liquid-filled vial positioned above a colored plastic globe that holds a small light bulb. The liquid in the vial (usually methelyine chloride or a light oil) has a very low boiling point, the heat of the bulb causes bubbles to rise and float up the vial, creating a unique "active" ornament. The fifties originals were heavy, expensive, and touchy, but the new retro replicas are lightweight, affordable, and reliable.