Why We Decorate: The Real Importance of Holiday Decor
Maybe it’s a floral wreath on your front door in the springtime or lights around your windows in December. It could be the little flags lining your sidewalk at the start of July or some silly pink throw pillows in February. These little details don’t seem all that important on their own, but, when we set out decorations throughout the year for the different holidays on the calendar, we’re saying something. We’re saying to ourselves, our family and friends, and our neighbors around us that this day, this time of year, is meaningful.
Maybe you’re not a big fan of decorating your home for holidays, or maybe you love it and look forward to it every year. Whichever camp you fall into, you might not know or you might not remember why decorating for special occasions through the year is important. It’s important because it brings people together! Specifically, decorating your house for holidays brings three groups of people closer together.
Decorating Brings Your Family Together
Decorating your house for Valentines, 4th of July, or Thanksgiving brings your family together in several ways. Depending on the holiday, sometimes the task of decorating itself actually takes your whole family! Whether it’s setting up the Christmas tree, hanging lights outside, or sticking mini flags in the ground, sometimes holiday decor takes an army, and that army is usually whoever is sitting around the house. Younger children especially may enjoy making decorations for different occasions, like paper chains or little wreaths made of cut-out paper handprints. When you need a hand hanging things high up or carrying boxes from the shed, chances are you’ll be enlisting the help of your family. This might not seem all that special, but decorating together can become a sweet tradition for many families. You can turn on some music and make it a whole event, and, before you know it, it’s a family tradition.
Decorating for holidays also brings your family together by making the space you live in more beautiful. It’s no secret that what your house looks like affects your mood, and sometimes all you need to do to relieve some stress is to straighten up your living room so your surroundings look a little nicer. Holiday decor is no different! You want to feel more festive? You want your family to remember to stop and be thankful for the good things in their lives? Mark the days as special by making your space look special. Glamour Nest writes about this in their article ‘Why Seasonal Decor Is an Act of Love.’ They point out that decorating for holidays creates happy memories for our families, as well as building excitement and giving days more significance. Decorating may seem trivial, but it really can be important because what it does – bringing our families closer together – is definitely important.
Decorating Brings Your Friends Together
This second benefit of decorating your home for special occasions is about hospitality. Hospitality is often associated with having people over for dinner or letting a visitor stay overnight in your guest room, and those things certainly qualify. However, hospitality is really so much more than just these classic examples. Hospitality is making people feel at home, and we can do that in so many little ways. One of those ways is making our spaces into spaces where people love to be. Where do you like to spend your time? It probably isn’t somewhere uncomfortable, unwelcoming, and ugly. When a place is comfortable, welcoming, and lovely, we love to be there! For you, maybe it’s as simple as getting some red, white, and blue paper plates for your 4th of July cookout. Or maybe it’s adding greenery to your front door so that your friends feel that extra bit more welcome to your white elephant Christmas party. Holiday decorating is certainly not a cemented requirement for welcoming your friends into your home, but you might be surprised how a little sprucing up can add a lot to the atmosphere!
Decorating Brings Your Community Together
This one might be a little less obvious, but decorating your house – especially the outside – can actually give a boost to creating bonds between neighbors! I didn’t think of this element of decor initially, but Better Homes & Gardens draws this conclusion from a study where people were asked their thoughts on different houses only from the outside. They write that “the decorated houses were seen as more ‘open’ or accessible, regardless of whether their inhabitants actually interacted much with their neighbors.” Some neighborhoods have decorations set out in parks or at their entryways, while others have decorating traditions among the residents, like lots of different people each contributing an ornament to a tree by the street for Christmas. Regardless of if you live in a neighborhood, an apartment complex, or out in the middle of nowhere with only another house or two around for miles, adding some holiday decor to the outside of your house can brighten up someone else’s day more often than you may realize. So, next time you’re dying eggs or cutting out paper leaves, don’t forget to hang a wreath on your front door too!
Conclusion
Marking different holidays throughout the year does a lot for us. Valentines reminds us of the importance of love and the people we love. The 4th of July makes us reflect on our freedom and blessings in the USA. Thanksgiving reminds us to be thankful and to enjoy the good things in our lives. New Years makes us think back on the year and think of the future – how we can grow and do better. But what these holidays and the rest of them have in common is that they bring people together. Family, friends, and communities grow closer through the marking of days, the celebration of special seasons. Maybe holidays have never seemed that important to you, or maybe these days bring back painful memories of times gone by or people who are no longer there to share in the celebrations. But no matter what these holidays have meant to you in the past, there is always room for making new memories. Whether you have old traditions to dust off or new ones to form, decorating your home for the holidays throughout the year is a great way to fill your life with good memories, extra meaning, and, of course, the people you love.
This is the first post of a new series called A Year of Decorating. Look out for the next post, where we’ll start with tips and tricks for decorating your home for Valentine’s Day!
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