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A traditionally-decorated Christmas tree is nice, but you have a world of opportunities to personalize yours. If you are a scientist, or you just love science, you’re going to covet these specialty ornaments that show off your geeky side. They are destined to be heirlooms.
Biology
Michelle Banks renders visions of cell division, bacteria, and other microscopic biology subjects in watercolors. Her prints grace many a laboratory, although she also does fabric scarves and paintings in petri dishes. And she has smaller works for sale, in little petri dishes made into Christmas ornaments! You can see them at her Etsy shop. Some are faithful representations of microscopic images, such as the single pyramidal neuron on the left. Others are whimsical, like the fluffy bird flu viruses on the right.
Glass artist Mark Kemp offers an amoeba for your Christmas tree. It’s made of solid glass, and should be recognizable to anyone who’s peered through a microscope at a drop of swamp water. Perfect for a scientist’s tree!
A perfect pre-Christmas gift for any biology geek, medical doctor, or molecular geneticist would be a strip of DNA for the Christmas tree. This DNA pillow ornament is hand-made and for sale through the Etsy shop reggieana. There’s only one, though. If you miss out, you might catch the science lab pillow ornament from the same seller.
I adore these Wet Specimen Holiday Ornaments from Forgotten Boneyard. They are heavy duty glass globes filled with water and your choice of spiders, leeches, sheep eyeballs, or insects. Too bad they are sold out. If the demand is there, the artist may have more next year.
Chemistry
Etsy seller NeuronsNotIncluded offers a handsome Christmas tree ornament that takes advantage of the element Holmium as it appears on the Periodic Table of Elements, in triplicate. If that’s not nerdy enough for you, the ornament on the right can be found at the same store.
The American Chemical Society has a list of a half-dozen or so recipes for making Christmas ornaments with chemistry, in the form of experiments. The snowflakes shown here were covered with homegrown borax crystals, starting with a pipe cleaner matrix or a matrix cut from a coffee filter.
Geology
Rocks on a Christmas tree? You Bet! Beautiful brightly-colored polished crystal agate slices make lovely Christmas tree ornaments. They aren’t diamonds; they are bigger and less expensive. This agate ornament comes from Etsy seller YDBT.
Psychology/Psychiatry
The father of psychoanalysis can be featured front and center on your Christmas tree -or possibly off to the side, where he can observe your behavior and obsessions. The 6” Sigmund Freud ornament is for sale at the Etsy store named SigmundFreud. Imagine that.
Astronomy
Nothing is more traditional than glass balls on your Christmas tree. Artists B.J. Johnson and Joy Alyssa Day offer hand blown glass ornaments that represent all the planets in our solar system (plus Pluto) in their collection called Gimme Some Space! The sizes are different, although not quite proportional to the real planets, and they can be purchased separately or as a set that includes the sun. The price is …astronomical.
Paleontology
There are many dinosaur Christmas ornaments, considering how kids love dinosaurs, and they aren’t hard to find. Cosmogorilla has a selection of science-related ornaments, including these cute renderings of long-extinct non-dinosaur species. Shown here are Anomalocaris (purple), Trilobite (orange) and Opabinia (blue).
If you want a real fossil, Etsy seller YDBT offers a Elrath Kingi trilobite fossil embedded in a Christmas ornament. On the right is a matching ornament featuring a 665 million-year-old ammonite fossil.
Various Disciplines
The Women Heroes of Science Ornaments comes in a set of six wooden ornaments, featuring
Rosalind Franklin (genetics) Marie Curie (radiation/chemistry) Jane Goodall (primatology) Rachel Carson (ecology) Elizabeth Blackwell (first U.S. female physician) Ada Lovelace (considered the first programmer)
Each one will be a conversation starter, so be sure you know how to explain who they are and what they did. They are also a great reminder for our children of what women have done and can do in science. There’s also a larger set with both men and women scientists.