Decorating Your Home for Christmas
We all know that the most wonderful time of the year can also be one of the most stressful times of the year for a lot of different reasons. Maybe hosting family is hectic or your December calendar fills up in what feels like minutes. The last thing you need is to also be stressed about decorating your home for the holidays. So, in this last post in our series A Year of Decorating, we’re going to share some ideas for how to decorate your house in ways that will hopefully add to your holiday spirit, rather than take away from it.
Five Tips for Tackling Christmas Decorating
There are a million different styles and flavors when it comes to decorating your house or apartment for the Christmas season, so, instead of recommending possible color schemes or specific decorations to use, this section will give some ideas for your decorating strategy! These five ideas are to honor traditions, try something new, mix and match, bring the outside inside, and choose a niche.
Honor Traditions
If you ask me, Christmas traditions are what really make the season so special. Maybe you drive around your neighborhood to look at lights each Christmas Eve, or maybe you swap names for a family gift exchange secret Santa style. Bring traditions into your decorating as well as your Christmas activities! This could be digging out old ornaments or Christmas dishes that belonged to parents or grandparents and incorporating those into your space. Or, if your family doesn’t already have traditions for decorating, you can start one! It could be a tree topper that you use every year without fail or some coordinated stockings for each member of your family. Christmas is the time of year for traditions, so lean into it with your decor!
Try Something New
On the other hand, using the same decorations every year could also get a little boring after a while. Try taking a year off from some of your usual decorations and adding some new ones. One idea that was trending for Christmas 2023 was incorporating the color blue into holiday decor. On trees, in wreaths, and in wrapping, adding a bit of blue doesn’t overpower the more classic Christmas colors, but it brings a lovely freshness to the traditional decor. Another recent trend has been to add ribbons to your decorations! Like the color blue, ribbons can be added to trees, garlands, wreaths, or presents to spruce them up. Try one of these previous trends or be on the lookout for the next one!
Mix and Match
In a perfect world, all our Christmas decorations would beautifully coordinate together for one, cohesive look of festivity. But, of course, living with other people means that you probably won’t be able to make everyone happy all the time. Christmas is the holiday where your family members are most likely to have their own opinions about decorations, so often there is a bit of bargaining involved in the affair. Some of your family might love white lights while others maintain that they can’t get into the holiday spirit without colored lights strung around the house. Your kids may want to stick to tradition while you want to try something new. Whatever the debate may be over, sometimes you just have to opt for peace and goodwill towards men, which might mean having a mixed and matched Christmas. And there’s nothing wrong with that! Maybe the deal is a pretty, themed tree this year and a chaotic, colorful one next year. Or colored lights outside and white lights inside. Whatever deal you strike, this tip is simply to remember that your people are more important than your presentation.
Bring the Outside Inside
Another great way to decorate your home for the Christmas season is to lean into the outdoor elements of the holiday. Hang garlands of greenery on your mantle or your door frames or incorporate pinecones in your decorations! Besides greenery, which is the more obvious option for bringing the outside inside, there are two fruits that make great Christmas decorations – cranberries and oranges. Dried orange slices can be made into ornaments, strung into garlands, or used to top off Christmas presents, and they add color, class, and a natural feeling to your decor. Here’s an article for making your own dried oranges! Cranberries, too, are super easy to work with when decorating for the holidays. Add some to your orange garland or try your hand at a classic cranberry and popcorn one! Here are some tips for getting started.
Choose a Niche
The final of the five tips for this post is to choose a niche. As we mentioned above, there are lots of different directions you can go with your style of Christmas decor, and one idea for your decorating is to really lean into that! Maybe your house is the one with a small tree in every room – each with a different theme. Or, maybe you collect snowman decorations and your decor always features them. Nutcrackers or ribbons or snowflakes or Santas – there are so many themes you can scatter throughout your space to give your home a unique flair in its festivity! If you’re looking to change up your holiday decor this year, choose a niche and go for it.
Bonus Ideas
To close out this final post of the series, here are two more tips. If you find yourself with too many Christmas decorations this year, our advice is, don’t try to fit them all in! Make a rotation system and keep some of your pieces packed away for next year. This will keep your space from being cluttered and overwhelming, and it will be extra special the next year to get to put out the decorations that didn’t make an appearance this year. On the other hand, if your problem is that you wish you had more decorations to fill your space, try a diy! There are so many Christmas decorations that you can make yourself, and they don’t look tacky. If you have kids, this could be a fun holiday activity to do together, or you can just turn on some Christmas carols and make some homemade garlands yourself!
For more decorating ideas for this Christmas season, check out this post for 112 of them!
That’s all for this post! Make sure to check out the other posts in this series to get decorating tips for the whole year.
