Kissmas Tree

A table ornament twinkling with tasty tinsel

Bing Crosby plays an outsized role in setting the holiday mood in my house, from our annual screening of White Christmas to his albums revolving on the turntable as the fire crackles. But I never quite understood why Bing, crooning “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” asks that his presents be on the tree until I designed and constructed this festive little holiday piece. With presents of foil-wrapped chocolates trimming each bough, this decoration will make everybody want to be at your home for Christmas. And when it isn’t the season any longer, the tree folds flat for convenient storage until next December.

Construction is straightforward, as the piece is basically just hardwood sticks stacked on a central rod and cut to shape. The bottom two sticks act as a base when the branches are fanned out, keeping the tree straight and stable. Shallow counterbores cut with a Forstner bit keep the chocolates in place. The top of the tree is adorned with a decorative finial available online for a few dollars, although a carved angel or turned wooden ornament would make a suitable crown. This tree was made of guanacaste, but any hardwood will do—or try mixing various exotics for a multi-colored tree.

Order of Work

• Drill for threaded rod
• Cut tree to shape
• Make base
• Counterbore for chocolates
• Apply finish and assemble

A flat-pack tree comes ‘round at Christmas

The tree is built from a stack of 30 sticks of wood run through with a threaded rod that’s captured at the bottom in a tee-nut and at the top with a threaded finial. Each of the strips is counterbored to corral Hershey’s Kisses. The two bottom-most sticks serve as a base when oriented perpendicularly. Splaying the branches at 45° to each other creates the conical tree shape. 

Start with a stack of sticks

Mill thirty 1/2 × 1-1/8 × 12" sticks for the tree, plus some extras for tool set-ups. Chuck a 1/4" bit in your drill press and set up to bore the threaded rod holes, centering them as precisely as possible. Drill the 1/4" holes in all but the bottom-most stick. Next, switch out your bit for a 5/16"-diameter bit, and drill the through-hole in the bottom-most stick. Then drill a counterbore in the bottom-most stick to accept the flange on a 1/4" tee-nut. Tap the tee-nut into its hole and screw one end of a length of threaded rod into it. Sand the top and bottom faces of all the sticks, and slip them onto the rod. Snug them down with a nut and washer and cut off the rod about 1" from the nut. 

Center hole first. A fence and stop block setup allows accurate, efficient boring of the 1⁄4" diameter through-hole for the threaded rod in each of the branches. For clean drilling, use a brad point bit, and place the stock on a backer board to minimize exit tearout. 

Countersink the tee-nut. Without changing your drill press setup, bore a 5⁄16" through-hole in the bottom-most stick, and then follow up by drilling a 1⁄8"-deep counterbore using a 7⁄8" Forstner bit as shown to accept the flange of a tee-nut. 

Taper the top and fashion the feet

With the tree parts still all pinched together on the threaded rod, mark the triangular profile, tapering the sides from 3-1/2" wide at the top to 12" at the third piece up from the bottom. Then trim to your cutlines as shown. Sand the edges and faces of the tree, and then remove the sticks from the rod, keeping them in order. Create the “feet” by crosscutting the outermost 1" from each end of the bottom-most stick, and gluing the pieces to the ends of the stick above it. The space lost to the saw kerf creates clearance for the two base pieces to rotate independently. 

Trim the tree. After marking out the taper on the stacked sticks, saw to your cutline. Guide the work using a miter gauge faced with fine sandpaper to prevent slippage. 

No kicking. When sawing the feet free of the bottom-most stick, don’t use the rip fence itself as a stop, which can create kickback. Instead, use a stand-off block against the fence in front of the blade. 

Counterbores for Kisses

Using a 7/8" Forstner bit in a drill press, cut 1/16"-deep counterbores to keep the chocolate candies in place. Again, a fence and stop-block setup simplifies the process for quick, accurate drilling, but this time adding a 1-1/4 × 2-1/2" spacer. Drill all of the outermost counterbores first, then move inward to the others as shown. Keep all the sticks in order as you work.

Outermost counterbores first. Drill the outermost counterbore 3⁄4" on center from the end of each stick. Set up the cut with the 11⁄4 × 21⁄2" spacer placed lengthwise between the stick and stop block. 

Second set next. Rotate the spacer 90° to drill the second set of holes moving inward. Do not drill any counterbore closer than 3⁄4" from the stick’s center hole. 

Innermost last. For a third counterbore on the longest branches, remove the spacer. Again, drill no closer than 3⁄4" from the center hole to allow kissing room. 

Finial and finish

Sand all the sticks and apply finish to them, still keeping them in order for organized reassembly afterward. Let the finish dry well, then remount the sticks on the rod and mark it for cutting to final length, based on the thread depth of your chosen finial. Hacksaw the rod to length, clean up the cut at the grinder, and reassemble the tree one last time. To put it on display, rotate the “branches” into position and load them with Kisses. I’ve learned to leave a few spots empty to invite plucking, as everyone seems reluctant to be the first. 

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Make sure the redundant two base sticks are perpendicular to each other for stability, then fan out the branches, securing everything by tightening the finial. 

’Til next year. Rotating all the branches parallel allows the tree to fold flat for easy storage. Tighten the finial to keep them that way.