Of all the holidays, at least in the US and UK, Christmas is easily the most decorative. Sure, we Americans might put up a flag on the Fourth of July and pumpkins on our porches on Halloween. And in England, we’ll hoist some bunting for a coronation or jubilee. But Christmas is different. At Christmas, we all become interior decorators.
As the holiday approaches each year, something inside many of us comes to life. Trees are bought, garlands and wreaths appear, lights are strung and switched on. Even gift wrapping becomes a decorative sport. It always amazes me that even people who have little interest in interiors most of the year will, at Christmas, decorate their homes with enthusiasm.
And there’s very little uniformity to our holiday expressions. Each has their own preferences, their niche. Maybe they collect nutcrackers, or make their own wreathes. Maybe they like Santa Claus figurines. And of course, we all know those houses that take their Christmas lights and inflatable reindeer to such extremes that they become local landmarks.
I’m always struck by how easily people seem to make decisions about how to decorate their houses for the season. They seem to just get on with it. No one seems paralysed by the fear of making the wrong decision.
Yet, for most of the year, these same people will feel completely stuck when it comes to decorating their homes. They’ll look at unfinished rooms and say they don’t know where to begin. They’ll worry about what colour of paint to choose, how to position their furniture, and where to hang their artwork. They’ll say they feel uninspired and unsure. I know that’s the case, because those are the conversations I have all the time with potential clients and during consulting sessions.
So where does this Christmas confidence come from, only to disappear again in January? What is it about the holiday that empowers the inner decorator in us all?
I think part of the answer lies in the fact that Christmas decorating is, by its very nature, temporary. The decorations go up, we live with them for a few weeks, and then they come down again. Nothing is final. And if something doesn’t quite look right, it doesn’t matter very much, because at the end of the season it is all packed away again, and you can try again next year.
Cost, too, plays a role. Most of us don’t spend a huge amount on our Christmas decorations. A sting of lights, baubles, a tree. They aren’t big cost outlays, and so we don’t approach those choices with the same seriousness that we would buying a sofa or a new rug.
And perhaps the most important feature of Christmas decorating is how we think about taste. For most of the year, we treat our homes as serious places. We have seen so many images of perfect houses in magazines and online, and we want that for ourselves too. We worry about whether we’re getting it right, and about how our choices might be judged if we don’t.
But Christmas operates under a different set of rules. Most of us aren’t striving for some image of perfection when we decorate for the holiday. And Christmas decorations often ignore the conventional ideas of good taste entirely. That’s exactly part of their appeal. Flashing lights, novelty ornaments, kitschy figurines… maybe we actually like those things. And at Christmas we don’t feel the need to justify that. We decorate the way we want to, not the way we feel we ought to. In other words, Christmas gives us permission to decorate for ourselves.
Given what I see each year at Christmas, I’d suggest that people don’t actually struggle with decorating most of the year because they lack creativity or confidence. Quite the contrary. Every December they demonstrate that they are perfectly capable of making decorative decisions. They know what they like, they can choose colours, they can pick out materials that suit them.
But for the rest of the year, I think they let permanence, cost, and, most importantly, the notion of good taste hold them back. Those things matter, of course, I’m not suggesting that we should ignore the realities. But nothing about decoration is really permanent. And costs can be managed. Taste only matters if you let it.
So I think there is something to learn from the way we approach decorating for Christmas. That we should remember that once a year, without drama or anguish, we all prove to ourselves that we’re capable of decorating our homes. We do it confidently, and, most importantly, we enjoy it.
