by Alison Storm | 12/20/10

You may decorate your Christmas tree with strings of popcorn, tinsel and ornaments handmade by your kids. But that's not how it's done at an Abu Dhabi luxury hotel. The Emirates Palace hotel announced that it's $11 million Christmas tree was decorated with real gold and real jewels, but supposedly the extravagance didn't go over as well as the hotel had hoped. The hotel later released a statement saying that it was sorry for its "attempts to overload" the Christmas tree tradition and that the gold, rubies, diamonds and other gems came from a hotel jeweler.

The Christmas tree my fit right in to the hotel's lobby which also boasts a vending machine that sells gold bars and week-long stays that come with a $1 million price tag. Some questioned whether the tree was in bad taste, which seemed to give the hotel's management second thoughts. According to a statement released by the news agency WAM the hotel said it regretted "attempts to overload the tradition followed by most hotels in the country with meanings and connotations that do not fall in line with the (hotel's) professional standards."

The hotel then said decorating the43-foot tall tree was the jeweler responsibility. "The hotel is just a venue for exhibiting the tree," hotel officials said according to the statement. While most of the United Arab Emirates is Muslim, the area exhibits many Christmas traditions including lights, carolers, and Santas to make foreign visitors feel welcome.