I admit to not being a grinch but not being THAT into Christmas. I also am pretty firm in not doing any holiday decorating until after Thanksgiving.
But I admit, the minute Thanksgiving is done, it feels ok/right to make the switch. Out with the pumpkins in with whatever winter decor you like.
I am REALLY embracing a “less is pleasing” decorating plan. Outside is simple (we live on a corner so do a couple things in front and then some back decor. Front = classic - candles in 9 main windows, two lighted 4 foot trees by either side of the front door and a spotlight on it all. Wreath on the front dutch door and pine greenery/red bows in two big pots that stay out all year. Back yard is more colorful: multicolored lights on the deck that expands the length of the house and a tall grapevine cone with white lights by the back door. More pine greenery (cut off from our pine trees!) in the window boxes with red bows.
Inside I’ve paired it down to basics - and I love it. Decorate the mantle with lights, pom pom garland and other simple stuff that really can stay through January. One grapevine cone with white lights in the year around sun porch, one small table top skinny branched tree on the foyer table w/timer lights. Then, this weekend, the real Christmas tree.
I would like to get a simple menorah as some of my family is Jewish and my kids have learned to also embrace the Hanukkah traditions to some degree.
DONE.
It’s easy to put up, take down and the lights make me the happiest.
What Christmas/Winter holiday decor if any makes you happy? Or does it make you happy or content NOT to do any?!
We put up our tree and decorations after Thanksgiving, the night before D left to go back to school.
I really enjoy the house being decorated. We mainly decorate the entry, dining room, living room, and then just have a few other things here or there.
Outside I have two large planters with ever greens, berry branches, and some ornaments, two large lanterns with candles hanging from the porch overhang, a sled, and the door wreath. Last year I did swag and ribbons along the front railing but I’m on the fence about that this year. Feeling like it may be overkill and I like the way the exterior looks now.
The only thing that is hard for me are the xmas tree ornaments. We have a number of angels for our son that passed and I always feel melancholy about all the years we missed with him. I also feel strangely possessive of the tree and how it looks. My D called me out on re-arranging ornaments and re-fluffing the tree after she had already done a section.
We did scale down the actually xmas tree this year and I don’t do lights because the old house doesn’t have outlets near where I need them ; )
I also start decorating right after Thanksgiving. I fill the FR, sunroom and kitchen with decorations. I’ll do the formal dining room if I know we will be entertaining that year.
I love it when it’s up, but I don’t enjoy doing it anymore. I guess that’s a little bag-humbug.
It never occured to me to do anything in the backyard. We’ll probably get a wreath and tree in mid-December when our younger son comes for a visit. (He has to work Christmas.) I have a lot of decorations, but I don’t always put them all out. There’s a pointsettia on the mantel now that my SIL brought for Thanksgiving.
Basically, our decor is the tree. It usually goes in the front window so can be seen from outside so that’s the “visible to passerby” decor as well as ours inside. This year I am considering putting it in the corner of the room instead - in the biggest window it darkens the room a lot at a time of year I’d rather not have it dark. I might put a wreath on the front door. Outlets for outdoors are not easy to get to here and it’s too cold to hang lights outside anyway, IMO.
I think I’ll get the tree next weekend. Set up in stand that day, add lights at some point, probably wait to do ornaments until D is home a few days before Christmas.
When the kids moved out, and the decorating & baking & presents was all on my plate, I pared waaaaay down.
First, no tree. This was met with objections & grumbling, however, not a one stepped forward to do it — especially the clean up!
I bought a nice indoor mantle wreath & mantle garland from a lovely person on Etsy and that, along with the stockings, is it for decorations. Easy peasy.
I might pick up an outdoor wreath at Trader Joe’s, for the back door.
I usually trim the evergreen bush in the back 40 & arrange the cut boughs in the front planters. Not happening this year. I was lucky to get hoses put away in time!
I stopped baking. Not a single cookie or cake! And that’s a big change from me making 5-6 different kinds in years past.
I started culling my holiday responsibilities year by year, starting as the kids began to leave home.
For me? What a difference! I’m MUCH less cranky about the holidays.
I really enjoy seeing the retail stores and restaurants decked out. We were at an Irish Pub last night that had strung lights all across the ceiling in a dense pattern. That must have been a project! It was so pretty!
I’m actually planning on not doing them this year. Will only send a handful to the older relatives who will be offended if they don’t get them. I don’t see the usefulness of sending 100+ cards to people who I communicate with and see my pictures almost daily on FB.
We will be gong bare bones this year. DD is the one who loves decorating, but she is very busy and is actually leaving Saturday and won’t be here for Christmas. DS doesn’t arrive until Christmas night. I’ll be away for a week before Christmas.
That leaves DH…so…I think it will be very minimal.
We do have a nice wreath on the front door. I probably will put up my beautiful fake tree on Sunday. And I’ll put out our nice holiday tablecloths. But that might be it…
Since moving to AZ where Christmas is NOT Christmas (putting Santa hats on your cactii is just wrong), I have become increasingly depressed at the thought of hauling out the Christmas crap and going through the motions. I have done so for the sake of creating magic for our child as he grew, but I’m so, so over it. When we moved out of the house he grew up in and into our current “retirement” house five years ago, we ditched about 75% of the crap. I look forward to the day (most likely, next year), when we just put up the tree/ornaments, toss the wreath on the door, and call it mother. And even then, we’ll put the stuff up two weeks before Christmas and take it down New Year’s day. I just hate the clutter.
ETA: No more baking here, either. No one needs or wants it. We also stopped buying presents for anyone but our son decades ago, so I stay far away from the depressing retail madness. He moved out of state this past summer and has asked that we stop the gift exchange as none of us needs anything so even that part of Christmas has become obsolete.
I did a lot more decorating when the kids were home. So far I have put garland on my stairway ( inside) , threw a wreath on the front door and put out a few table decorations. That will be it for this year except the tree. We usually put up 2 - one real and one artificial, but we’re going to D and SIL’s for Christmas so no real tree this year.
For the last several years I was buying gorgeous poinsettia plants from the local H. S. Band which was my quick and easy decorating trick. Just realized yesterday that my band mom friends kids are now both in college. Need to find a new connection next year.
A few years ago, a good friend wanted to bake cookies and didn’t want to do it alone. We will be doing it again this Saturday and we are so looking forward to it. We bake 8-10 different kinds of cookies and split them between us. Lots of variety. Plus we have a really really good time doing it…lots of laughs and at least one big mistake a year!
Mostly decorate in the living area. The four windows each get a string of lights draped around their openings. Our tree is a little bitty artificial one that I used when the kids were little, and they’re so sentimentally attached that they won’t hear of anything different. That goes in the window most visible on approach to the house. Thanks for mentioning a sled @abasket my old one is down basement and will go up this week!
Not much other than Santa hats throughout the rest of the house: one for the garden gnome that winters in the bathroom, and one each on a stuffed animal in each of the kids’ rooms. Oh, and a couple on gargoyles we have sitting around the house.
Forgot one of my favorite decorations: My mother purged just about everything, so I’m the proud possessor of a half-dozen boxes of bright sparkly glass ornaments from the 1960s. We don’t use a tree large enough for them, and hanging them on a decorative chain like I used to is a bit of a pain, but I fill a pretty large bowl or two with them and set them out. Seeing them makes me happy.
I love indoor Xmas decorations. We don’t do much outside and that’s fine by me, because I don’t see my outside. I see my inside. I like to curl up in my recliner and see everything around. Usually, I put them up Thanksgiving break and take them down NYE. This year, they went up early because we went away for Thanksgiving.
We have 2 main trees. A 9 foot with white lights in the main foyer and a 7.5’ colored lights in our bedroom. The latter was our tree in our old house and our bedroom is 20’x20’. I am an ornament whore. I think every branch is covered. But in later years, I realized I love them because they are my memory trees. Every year I make a photo ornament of the kids. They also often get hallmark (or cheaper) ornaments. We also have tons of homemade ornaments. I even have the plastic rudolph head with the chewed up nose that was part of a candy filled something or other that I got as a pre-schooler. We also have 2 chimney areas to set up. One has the stockings, the other was for Santa gifts. We had so much fun Xmas morning as we did it in 3 stages. It’s a PITA to put up and take down, but it just makes me happy every day looking at it.
Photo holiday cards and the infamous letter (with more pics) is also a tradition I love. I don’t send the letter to many people - just a few older relatives. But, it makes me sit down and rehash the year. I have 2 extra copies printed for each kid in a folder, so someday they can read what I thought was important to tell each year of their life. It’s a diary of sorts for me.
I also love making Xmas cookies with the kids. We have lots of fun making them in obnoxious fashion. We have elephants, bats, rhinos, ghosts, and make all sorts of odd colored icing and throw on way too many sprinkles. Our cookies will never make a magazine, but they taste great!
What do I hate? Parties and events and obligatory extended family visits. We keep those to a bare minimum. And I thank God that I never have to sit through another Xmas school music program!
@abasket your decorations sound lovely. This year I did something I never did before: I bought a fake tree. I love the real trees but they cannot go up for a month without losing all their needles and becoming a fire hazard. So I ordered a Balsam Hill 6.5 ft. blue spruce fake tree from Amazon and put it up on Friday. My daughter, who was visiting for Thanksgiving, was initially appalled, but even she was able to admit that it’s a nice looking tree. It took me a while to fan out the needles and branches and I did a number on my back:)
We put outside blue lights onto two evergreen trees on our property (one in the front yard, one in the back). I have the main tree in the family room and a tabletop fake lit tree on top of the piano in the living room. I hang up various garlands and decorate with battery-powered LED fairy lights. I put up a creche that my grandmother bought in the 1950s in Bethlehem. I have two Della Robbia-style fruit wreaths that I tie onto some folding doors between the dining room and the family room. I put a wreath on the front door and some swags on the coach lights outside. And I light lots of candles (including LED).
Yes they do, but if you average out the cost of a real tree (we have normally bought a Frasier fir at Home Depot for 75 bucks) they pay for themselves in two or three years.
When my 23 yo son was home for Thanksgiving, we baked cookies 2 nights, at his request. I couldn’t turn down that request.
We also cut down a tree while he was here, but didn’t get around to decorating it. Part of his enthusiasm was he has a GF he brought home.
I decorate the mantle with lots of things, and put kids Christmas pictures through the years on various tables. I have a ceramic tree I may or may not get out this year, and i will probably feel compelled to decorate the dining room a little if we eat any meals in there. I am definitely cutting back, and soon may relent and let my husband get the fake tree he keeps claiming he wants.
