No time to bother with Christmas trees this year? Or simply too Scrooge to splash out on some festive decorations? There is nothing like your own Christmas tree and lights to get you in the Christmas mood and since we spend half of our life behind a computer, it only seems fair that your PC gets involved too. Christmas Tree Interactive Desktop is a great little program that installs a tree on your desktop, along with other assorted Christmas goodies, and then allows you to decorate it as you want - and it doesn't cost a cent.

You can decorate the tree with lights, ornaments, place presents underneath it, choose a few festive tunes to play in the background and even change the outdoor scenery. And if like me, you're worried about electrocuting yourself on cheap Christmas lights from the convenience store, you'll take a lot of pleasure in adjusting the tempo, design and colours of the lights without risking life and limb. The only problem is that the tree and scenery is so full of ornaments and decorations that it makes seeing things difficult on your desktop but you can always shift your most important icons to a clearer part of the screen.

If you didn't have enough with Nick's post about how to have your own Christmas themed interactive desktop, here's another software app that can help you show your eagerness to celebrate the upcoming holidays. Free Christmas Tree is a desktop companion, that is, a small piece of software that sits right on your desktop and acts as some kind of virtual decoration for your PC. And, as you can tell by its name, this time the decoration comes in the shape of a Christmas tree.

This little digital tree can be customized with different skins, including several trees in various sizes and also an array of Christmas balls. Plus, it displays a countdown clock that you can set to calculate the time left for Christmas Day, New Year's Day or Julian Christmas (January 7th). Free Christmas Tree can also play Jingle Bells every hour, but we strictly recommend to enable this feature only if you're a real Christmas fan. Otherwise it may get too cheesy.