Decorate for Christmas this year with intention, joy, and motivation by focusing on the meaning this holiday season gives you. It’s a time that can bring a whirlwind of busyness and emotion. Christmas is arguably the most widely impacting annual tradition in mainstream American culture. Once a highlight of December only, it seems that each year the commercial sphere of Christmas creeps earlier and earlier into its preceding months (please, just stay out of Halloween!). Since so many retail establishments begin to decorate for Christmas in early November (and encourage us to do the same), it is hard to miss the memo that Christmas is coming! So as you get ready to decorate for Christmas, remember a few key tips we’ll cover here.
Christmas Often Brings Tidings of Complications
What is (hopefully) a magical, memorable, and exciting time for children can slowly turn into a much more complicated time for adults if left unchecked. This isn’t necessarily all bad, though most of us can attest to a multitude of experiences, both good and bad:
More festivities, activities, and ‘obligations.’ Much more spending, hustling, and stress. More traditions, family gatherings, sugar calorie consumption, and alcohol consumption. Also, more color and more fun.
For better or for worse, despite any added stress (whether we allow it to occur by default, whether we bring it upon ourselves, or whether it is truly beyond our planning or control), my inner child loves Christmas. And over the years I have learned how to navigate the holidays intentionally and with as much grace as I can muster (imperfectly but more successfully each year) so that it is an overall positive experience. Much of this has to do with focusing on what matters and delegating my calendar space and inner space accordingly. Now that I have a baby, this season is even more exciting because I get to share it with him as a brand new exciting experience from a child’s point of view!
Many Ways to Decorate for Christmas
When you walk into a home or any physical space, what exactly about that space tells you it’s Christmas season? Your auditory sense may clue you in if you hear Christmas music, and your olfactory sense may trigger an immediate Christmas memory with smells like gingerbread, pine needles or wassail. Visually, you will know without a doubt what season it is when you see a decorated Christmas tree, mistletoe, holly garlands, nutcrackers, manger scenes, Santa Claus, elves, tinsel, or Christmas lights.
Some people decorate for Christmas with tasteful minimalism, and others create a positively magical Christmas scene. I fall somewhere in between, perhaps closer on the spectrum to minimal simply because I gave away many decorations due to lack of storage space. I deftly work with what we have, though, since part of enjoying the holiday season involves lavishing my home (and, previously, cubicle space) in holiday decor. Here I’ll share a couple of tips that I’ve learned over the years when decorating for the holidays:
1. Your Holiday Decor Does Not Need to Match Your Surrounding Home Decor
There can be a visual clash between your home’s overall design aesthetic and your holiday decorations. As I love to decorate in general, it should be no surprise that I also love to decorate for the holidays! However, rich Christmas hues of greens and reds hardly play nice with my home’s beachy pastel palate. Yes, I want our beautiful wall colors year-round. And that notion was challenged upon our first Halloween and Christmas in our house. Yet, this is what I have learned about color scheme competitions: everybody is a winner!
This was surprising because I was so afraid my holiday colors would clash horribly with all of the other colors in the house (peachy orange, yellow, sea green, light blue, etc.). However, I honestly don’t notice any cacophony. If you stop and study it, then you may agree that the colors don’t match. And that turned out to not matter. The festiveness of the holiday decorations outweigh any mismatched wall colors, so that you just don’t really notice an issue.
This illustration should also advise: don’t be afraid to go bold with your wall colors and year-round home decorating if it truly makes you happy. You don’t have to be stuck with a neutral color just because you are concerned that your favourite colors won’t match what you plan to put out when you decorate for Christmas. It is okay if they don’t match. Everything will still look good!
Christmas Gift Packaging Makes Excellent Decor
Keep pretty Christmas cards. In fact, keep any cards year round that are pretty in case you want to display them other times of the year or use them later in a collage or creative homemade card. Christmas cards are lovely to display on whatever flat surface is purposed for decorations and free of drafts. Cards that I received over the years served me well at my previous job where I arranged them on my office door to spell ‘NOEL’ for our door-decorating contest (I won third prize). There are plenty of other fun decor ideas for which old Christmas cards can be re-purposed as well.
3. Segue Directly from Holiday Decor to a Separate Style of Winter/January Decor
If you get a little depressed when taking down Christmas decorations after the holiday (but don’t want to leave them up well into January as a sort of drab and stale reminder of something that won’t happen again for 11 months, similar to arriving at a party well after everyone has already gone home early), I recommend establishing designated ‘January’ decorations. Specific decorations for January alone can tide you over until February, by which time you may display Valentine’s Day decorations. Or, if you don’t decorate for Valentine’s Day, then designate ‘winter’ decorations for the remainder of winter after December holidays.
January/winter decorations need not be ‘winter weather’ themed. Unlike many others, I’m not a fan of snow-themed decor (snowflakes, snowmen, sledding, mittens, snowy cottages, snow-covered evergreen landscapes, etc.). If you’re equally unenthused by snowmen and their habitat, your winter decor could instead celebrate any favourite topic you choose.
Ideas for Celebrating the After-Christmas Winter Season
I’ve established some movie-themes for January because certain stories are amazing and actually quite comforting, especially on dark winter evenings. My designated January traditions include any of the following: watching Aladdin, Harry Potter (and eventually re-reading the books), or Lord of the Rings and its making, and solving New York Times crossword puzzles in the NYT crossword app (the jazzy jingle after completing a puzzle is surprisingly rewarding). These are low-effort, restful activities. Now, I hardly have time to watch any movie after putting my son to bed without sacrificing sleep. But it’s fun to at least dip into some old favourites as time allows. Finishing just the LOTR trilogy and its Making easily spans two months, so plenty to fill those dark, cold nights!
I don’t have many decorations for these themes but was gifted a couple of gems that add to the festivity. One is a 1,000 piece Aladdin jigsaw puzzle. It took a long time to complete during my baby’s unreliable naps, but it was so fun! The other is an Aladdin lamp teapot that serves four cups of tea. If you also love the idea of serving tea from Aladdin’s lamp, I have used it for that function plenty of times (and it also makes a nice dining table centerpiece!).
Decorate for Christmas and Celebrate the Holidays in a Way That Nourishes You
The December holidays bring a unique experience for each of us. Only you know what truly nourishes you during this time and which changes you can make to improve your experience. Remember that the best gift you can give someone is the highest essence of yourself; that is, the best you that you can be. This is not accomplished by doing things or making ‘sacrifices’ that actually make you an emotionally depleted and cranky person. This is accomplished by doing what you need to do to live in a way that resonates with your true values and to have genuinely loving and considerate relationships with others based on integrity and honesty.
If you plan to decorate your space for the holidays, do so with abandon! You don’t have to match your home’s existing design aesthetic, nor do you need to temporarily relocate your year-round decorations (though I’ve moved a few of mine to make space for the Christmas ones). Keep your festive cards, bows and ribbons, which you can use for creative decorating ideas. And don’t let that good energy drop after Christmas: January can be wrought with possibility of your own making! Tap into your passions, even your inner child, to discover things that truly bring you delight and incorporate your own new traditions for the weeks or months after Christmas so you have another festive season to look forward to. After all, this is your space and, whether you decorate for Christmas or not, you can create the memories that bring joy and meaning for yourself and your family.