Are you decorating your home for the holidays?

[Adventine]

Curious as to how many of you take part in this tradition, and why.

I haven't put up any decorations. I've always liked looking at tastefully done Christmas displays, but it doesn't extend to a desire to decorate my own home. I don't like thinking about more things to clean and organize and store. Also, I'm really, really lazy when it comes to decorating. Life is simpler when I don't have to think about lights and ribbons and tinsel.

How about you guys?

[lizzzi]

I love the festive way my house looks through the holidays, but have learned over the years to keep it simple and use only those things that make me happy and can be displayed quickly the day after Thanksgiving, and put away quickly on "Little Christmas" (Epiphany). It involves only two trips to the store. Color scheme is mostly red and green throughout. I have three sturdy boxes of Christmas "stuff" and that is it. 1. The day after Thanksgiving, I go to a good nursery and buy three to five big poinsettias...put them artistically (lol) around the house. Put up beat-up old Nativity set that belonged to my parents. Put up one string of Christmas lights on front stoop railing, to be plugged in at dusk. Put second string of Christmas lights on the headboard of my bed...can be seen from living room (very small house), very cheery when lit. Take down "Happily Ever After" from above my kitchen sink, and hang the small grapevine wreath with red ribbons, pinecones, jingle bells. Set the wooden hand-carved Santa on an end table somewhere. Lighted mantel garland goes above the bookcases. 2. On December 23 I buy a four-foot Christmas tree from Home Depot, bring it home, and decorate it with the contents of one storage box. It is big enough to be a "floor" tree, but small enough so I can handle it easily. It comes down on Jan. 2.

And that is it. I love the way the house looks...wish it could look like that all year. Very little muss or fuss.

[pachnik]

I do decorate my house for Christmas.  We have some Christmas lights along the roof line and a big wreath on the front door.  Inside, I buy some large pointsettas and put them on both sides of the mantel.  I also buy/scavenge some Christmas greenery like holly and make a display in my biggest vase.  Then I pull out the decorations box and add some little bits and pieces from it around the house.  That's it.

But like OP I also like to go out and look at tasteful decorations - my favourites are the huge pine trees outside the local museum covered in strings of lights.

[G-dog]

We rented many years and didn't have money or space for many decorations. When we finally bought a house I had realized I don't want a house or possessions engineered for only one or a few days a year -
I don't need enough service ware for dinner for 30
I don't need enough sq ft or bedrooms for more people than live in the house all year
I don't need specific decorations for holidays that I have to store 350+ days per year

So no tree, no lights inside or out, no tchotkes (so?).

I do enjoy looking at decorations others do, but it just isn't worth it to me.

We also no longer give out candy at Halloween (that is another story)

[lizzzi]

Well, the holiday season is really longer than one or a few days. The secret is not to decorate with a bunch of junk--get the most bang for your buck with a small amount of beautiful things that mean something to you. Agree that you don't need dishes for service for 30...but if you have a get-together, buy some nice holiday- themed paper and plastic to augment what you already do have. Not sure what extra bedrooms (or not) have to do with this discussion.

I figured out that a bunch of junky stuff makes me antsy and uncomfortable (no foil-wrapped toilet paper rolls hanging from the rooftops, thank you)...but enhancing the beauty and warmth of the house is just so...nice.

[G-dog]

My point was I don't make my decisions based on the most things or space I might need someday, I try to make decisions based on average day-to-day needs. For me, this includes not buying permanent (need to be stored) or temporary holiday decorations, or decorating for the holidays. So, I don't need any tips or secrets on how to do it, because I am not interested in doing it in the first place (like the minimalist thread and Arebelspy's discussion on his wardrobe).

I realize that being child free is a big part of this equation, having kids often leads to participating in traditions.

But as I said, I can enjoy what others opt to do, and I assume they do it because it brings them some joy. It is all good!

[GreenSheep]

I go back and forth on this. For years, I was too busy with school or work to bother, and in the past couple of years I've done a little decorating. Last year I got a tree for the first time in years. I've also bought some decorations on sale, and I've made a few myself (wine bottles spray-painted white, then sprayed with glue and epsom salt stuck on to look like snow, topped off with a few branches and red berries; pine cones collected from the yard, candles, etc.). I like the festive look, but I think I enjoy it less than I expected. This year I'm not going to bother with a tree. Last year I was disappointed that it didn't smell as nice as I remembered (not strong enough), and the thing I love about a Christmas tree is the smell.

I typically don't decorate for other holidays, mostly because Christmas is my favorite, and I really don't want all that junk requiring storage for most of the year. My favorite Christmas memories are of experiences, not decorations, so I really want to work on creating new memories around experiences... having friends over for a hot chocolate (spiked or not!) party, wrapping presents while listening to Christmas music, etc. I always had a stocking when I was a kid (whole family did, all made by my mom), and this year I finally got a stocking for my boyfriend (with whom I live) to revive that tradition. It's fun to come up with mini gifts to put in there -- generally consumables. (When I was too young to remember, my dad tucked a $100 bill at the toe of my mom's stocking, and she didn't notice it on Christmas Day. In August, she was getting ready to go back to work as a teacher, and she told him she wished she had more money to spend on clothes for work. He told her to go check her stocking. I don't know how he managed not to say anything for 8 months! Maybe he was hoping he could get away with it all year and not have to spend as much on Christmas the following year.)

[gaja]

When December hits, we have only one or two hours of daylight left. So for me, decorating with lights is more about surviving the dark times, than about Yule celebrations. But then, Yule is mainly a celebration of the return of the sun, so lights make sense.

We have small LED stars in one window, and one larger star in another window, and the kids usually have something similar to menoras in their windows. The day before christmas eve, we put up a small christmas tree.

[I'm a red panda]

We usually decorate but this year we had a horrible loss and are not in the mood for Christmas, so we didn't do anything this year.

Our decorations are inexpensive and we don't go over board but it makes the house look festive when the weather is so dreary.

(I also have a ridiculous amount of storage room though. It wasn't possible to find a small house with a 3-car garage, and that was a must have for the woodshop.)

[soccerluvof4]

I like the way the house looks but its a pain in the ass. We usually do decorate though. This year however with just moving in we did the inside but nothing on the outside. To me the best part is the candles/smell and the music on but yea we do tree, stocking etc...

[muckety_muck]

We put up a tree, with the kids. I like the smell of a real tree, and I like the twinkling lights. The only other thing we really do is some random crafts that all get thrown away at the end of the year, and some holiday music on pandora.

My requirement is that ALL the christmas stuff has to fit in ONE rubbermaid bin. Fits nicely in the hall closet and is out of the way.

[iris lily]

The one single thing I loathe  about these holidays is "tradition." If I have to do the same damned thing every year I will slit my throat.

so, I don't always decorate, and if I do it is never in the same way.

This year I decorated our two fake trees in the home of a friend. He put his house on our neighborhood's house tour but he has no Xmas decorations. So, we used many of our decorations in his house.

I did put a length of greenery with red lights  on our fireplace mantel. That's enough for our interior.

And since the house tour is happening on my block, I strung about a dozen strings of lights on our small but fat Alberta spruce trees. They are cute, I love their chubbiness.

[oldladystache]

Outside only.

My unit has about a 25 foot frontage, so I hang a string of lights from the nails on the eaves. Takes about 10 minutes to put them up and set up the timer.

[Le Poisson]

Inside and out, we do our best. We have a Christmas-barfed-on-our-lawn house and 2 trees indoors. Along with a half dozen boxes of miscellany in the house.

Really for me its not a big deal to set up a bunch of inflateables and plug them in, or to run a string of lights along the eaves. Everything is set on a 4 hour timer to come on at dusk. We leave Rudolph and Santa inflated 24-7. Each year one inflateable dies, and is replaced after Christmas for under $10.00. We refuse to pay more than $10 for a character on the lawn. This year for teh first time ever we are getting characters as gifts - never had that happen before. But its a good thing. Snoopy was DOA when he came out of the box. We also have a family of glowing wireframe Christmas chickens which I wish would hurry up and die already.

[Le Poisson]

We usually decorate but this year we had a horrible loss and are not in the mood for Christmas, so we didn't do anything this year.

Our decorations are inexpensive and we don't go over board but it makes the house look festive when the weather is so dreary.

Sorry to hear about this Jes - hopefully next year is better.

[crazy jane]

No.

[Kris]

Yeah. I suggested to DH that we not decorate but he said he wanted to. My stepdaughter and her boyfriend are coming over, so it's mostly for them.

[Spork]

We are a very non-religious household.  And yes, we decorate.  It's not over the top, but we always have a tree and the house has about 1000 lights strung.  (FYI: LED, so the whole string is about 85w.  Running them 5 hours a day for 30 days is about 15kwh.  At under 10 cents a kw/hr, this is approximately nothing.)

I can take them or leave them but bottom line: It makes my wife happy.  I'll happily spend a few days on the roof once a year for that.  I'm retired.  I've got the time.

edit: missing hours on kwh

[Rural]

 Nope. That's just more crap that would end up taking up space in the landfill not biodegrading one day very soon.


Tradition? I do burn one candle the night of the winter solstice all night long. But that's not "tradition"– that's to help the sun find its way back again! ;-)

[lbmustache]

We are a very non-religious household.  And yes, we decorate.  It's not over the top, but we always have a tree and the house has about 1000 lights strung.  (FYI: LED, so the whole string is about 85w.  Running them 5 hours a day for 30 days is about 15kw.  At under 10 cents a kw/hr, this is approximately nothing.)

I can take them or leave them but bottom line: It makes my wife happy.  I'll happily spend a few days on the roof once a year for that.  I'm retired.  I've got the time.

Non-religious here too but I LOVE the holidays. However I am like others - too much crap and I start to get overwhelmed. I love looking at the super fancy decorated houses but I could never do that myself.

I live in a small apartment/condo so I just string two sets of LED lights outside and I have a 4ft tree inside with lights and decorations on it. I don't really put other stuff up (knickknacks, hangings, dishes, etc.). I set stuff up around Thanksgiving so I can enjoy a good 6 weeks of decorations (take everything down after new years).

[iknowiyam]

... My requirement is that ALL the christmas stuff has to fit in ONE rubbermaid bin. ...

Same here.

[pachnik]

... My requirement is that ALL the christmas stuff has to fit in ONE rubbermaid bin. ...

Same here.

Yes, me too.  My Christmas stuf all fits into 1 banana box.

[Noodle]

Yes, but other than the tree stuff, it all fits in one box and I can put it out in under an hour. I just moved into a new place this year and picked up a few things to replace items that had bitten the dust, either from moving or just aging (but got weeded for the move). Most years I don't buy anything new. Whether or not the tree goes up depends on how much I am working over the holidays. This year I had free time early on so went ahead and did it.

[Sailor Sam]

I decorate inside. I love the way a tree in the window looks. Harkens straight back to childhood joy for me. I have a little 2 ft tree, enough lights & ornaments to make it look good, and my stocking. Offseason, everything fits in one box, which also pleases me.

If I ever buy a house, I'll line the roofline and doors with white lights. Gingerbread-y, without being obnoxious.

[RNwastash]

We decorate inside- Tree and other knick knacks collected from years before.  The kids are older so we decreased the amount of decorations.  We stopped putting lights up.  This has helped simplify the Christmas process.

[Fi(re) on the Farm]

We decorate both inside and out.  In our front yard I put a few vintage sleds that I put greenery on, some pretty white LED snowflake lights and some urns filled with greens.  My husband, on the other hand, does the whole tacky on parade theme, blow up snow man, plastic light up candy canes.  My daughter is autistic and loves the stuff he does so we go with it. Inside we have a tree we cut down at a local tree farm, and I decorate with some of my grandmother's decorations and some greens.  The only things I've bought in the past few years are LED lights after Christmas and some plastic ornaments to replace the glass ones that have broken (we have dogs with long tails!).

[mm1970]

We have a small house and no garage.  So, we have two plastic bins.  One holds the fake tree in its parts, and the other holds the decorations, lights, etc.

Some of the decorations are little figurines that were my spouse's as a child.  Including a lot of "nissa" (elves).

The tree decorations are a mix of mine, his, and gifts from friends (handmade).

We have lights for the tree, a string for the window, a string for the porch, and a string for the front hedge.

We've got kids, and it's festive.  It fits in 2 bins and their permanent home is under the front porch.  It has its own foundation, and a little screen "window" that my husband screws and unscrews to get in and out.  He took the bricks that used to be in the back patio and put them on the ground.

We tape up holiday cards as they come.

For other holidays - we have a sign on our porch that has different wooden things to hang (wedding gift). 

For Halloween, we have one strand of lights and a few pumpkin things that the kids made, that we hang on the walls/ doors.  This fits in one fabric cube.

That's really it.

[calimom]

Another non-religious home here, and I love the holidays.  We actually have two trees:  in the family room a fresh-cut that my kids lighted and decorated with all kinds of crazy stuff like Star Wars figurines and Barbie doll heads, along with construction paper chains and stuff.  It's fun.  In the living room I have a pre lit manmade tree in a more tasteful kind of theme, along with lighted garland on the mantle in the same theme.  A segment of my small business involves holiday decorating so I change it up each year at home with whatever doesn't get used for my commercial clients.  I can't believe I'm into it when I'm knee deep in lights and shiny stuff for a month, but I am. 

We also wrap lights around a huge old California Live Oak in the front yard, when the weather's so gray I enjoy coming home (or having people over) and being cheered by the lights. 

Overall I hope my kids have good memories about the holidays when they're older.  Good smells from pine and baking, music and all that kind of thing.

[expatartist]

No. We are child free, atheist (me), agnostic (him), and live far from our home countries' traditions in my corporate flat - in an officially atheist country. Though part of my job is designing holiday decorations for work - they can't be 'too Christian', given where we live.

Around here, the big holiday season is in February (Chinese New Year). When we lived in traditional housing downtown, we'd decorate outside with Chinese lanterns - but more often than not they'd be blown off our balcony by Mongolian winds.

[Emilyngh]

Yes, but we have it down to a science in a way that I feel like we're festive, but it doesn't take a tone of effort or storing a ton.

We string LED white lights on our front porch railing (easy to reach and super quick to setup) and put a ornament ball wreath on the front door (made with dollar store ornaments the other year), and that's it for outside.

We have a small potted evergreen tree that we keep in the upstairs hallway during the rest of the year.   We put it on the side table in the dining right in front of the large double windows and decorate it using white lights and our sentimental ornaments.   You can see it lit up through the window and it's a way to have a tree without buying a new tree ea year, having a large tree take up a lot of floor space in the house, storing/using a fake tree, or getting rid of a dead tree each year.   We''re not home xmas eve or morning, so we don't need our own large tree.

We put some fake branches with berries and nut crackers (a mix of genuine ones bought in Berlin and cheap one) on the mantel.   We tuck a couple other large ornaments here or there in the house, put a few sparkly trees on the bookshelves, and we're done!

[Zikoris]

Nope. We have a small apartment and I'm not willing to use my extremely limited storage space for decorations. I'd rather fill my storage shelf with bulk cat litter and toilet paper.

[Cassie]

When my kids were home I would decorate the entire house.  I was young, it was fun and they enjoyed it. As they moved out it was less and less. Fast forward and I got rid of most stuff and the tree.  I have 1 box of stuff that I love so it does not take long to decorate.

[kittenstache]

Yes, I decorate for the holidays. I have a 4' Christmas tree and a small Nativity set. Takes about 10 minutes to set everything up and, come January, store away.

[Bardo]

Bubble lights.  It's all about the bubble lights.

Tbh, I'm not really comfortable with this idea of "tasteful" Christmas decorating.  To me this is the festive time of year, the one time when we might gleefully toss good taste out the window.  I have a close relative that strives each year for a Very Tasteful Christmas, and if anything the result is stilted and intimidating.  I mean, do you really want your house looking like a freakin' Pottery Barn catalog?  Perhaps it is my "congenital lowness of brow," but bring on the garishness!

[Nickyd£g]

Christmas is my favourite holiday of the year, and I don't decorate for any others.  I have a fake tree, and quite a few decorations which I display, though am pretty minimalist.  I only do my living room and hallway inside, as I live in a flat.  It takes about an hour to take it all down, and I have a cupboard in my spare bedroom where I keep everything for Christmas - the tree, decorations, gift bags, cards, wrapping paper and ribbons.

[MandyM]

I used to decorate a little bit, but one of my cats is a trouble maker. And I foster cats, so they are always a wild card. The last time my roommate put up a small tree (probably 4 years ago), we had to pick it up off the floor at least once a day. Its fine with me as I'm not much into decorating in general...basically, I let my cat be the excuse.

[Squirrel away]

Nope. We have a small apartment and I'm not willing to use my extremely limited storage space for decorations. I'd rather fill my storage shelf with bulk cat litter and toilet paper.

Haha, I always make sure I have a supply of cat litter and loo roll too.:D

We have a small home so I bought a small artificial tree and a box of baubles. I did buy some LED decorations too but I will keep them up all year.:)

We don't decorate outside but some of our neighbours do.

[eyePod]

My wife did. She loves it. It's fun seeing my daughter get excited about the holidays. She's 3 and loves the lights. We don't go crazy and always buy everything on sale. Now, trying to wrangle in the in-laws and their age inappropriate, ill-researched, stupid purchases for our daughters... that's another situation completely!

[Dicey]

We decorate inside and out. Love doing it every year now, but when I was single working retail, I didn't have much energy for it. One year I put up a tree and just stuffed it with a box of fake hydrangeas I'd gotten from the display department at work. It looked lovely. Since I've retired, I have a lot more energy to decorate, so I do more. I also bake and make a lot of toffee. I host an annual Neighborhood Cookie Party and Food Drive. I bake all the cookies myself, except this year, when our oven broke. DH was able to fix it, but only after two shipments of parts, to the tune of $400+, gah! So glad he's handy!

What I do not do is scour stores for 90%-off-for-a-bunch-of-decor-crap-I-don't-need deals or amass collections of expensive holiday items just to show them off, like a complete set of Spode dishes. (Yeah, I have two pieces of Spode, both were free.) No themes, no inflatables, no competition with my friends or neighbors.

What I do love is the flood of memories that come flooding back when I open the boxes and decorate the house. Gets me every time. I leave everything up until  the Epiphany, which is easier now that we have a fake tree. We rescued it when we cleaned out my MIL's house. Apparently, she trash-picked it years ago. It's big and has lights and it rotates* so you can see all of the ornaments. Who would throw something like that away?

*Note for cat people: Our tree sits on a wooden chest and is on a timer. Every evening when the lights go on and the tree starts rotating, the cat jumps on the box and sits at the base of the tree, letting it rotate around her. She doesn't touch anything, she just sits and stares at it for hours. Very funny. Since we don't exchange gifts, there's plenty of room for her there.

Edited for Jack. Notice the throw on the chair behind her. She likes to sit in Santa's lap when she's not under the tree. They don't show in the photo, but there are lots of ornaments dangling, which she completely ignores. Proof that she's not a "normal" cat, as if there is such a thing...

[Le Poisson]

Our biggest Christmas fail is a China Sleigh and Reindeer set I bought my wife Y-E-A-R-S ago. As I recall I paid around $150 per reindeer (there are 8 of them) plus another $400 or so for the sleigh which has a music box in it, and takes a tealight to glow and put a beautiful reflection on the wall behind it of a winter scene. Pre-mustache me was in awe of this set, and it is still lovely.

Each reindeer holds a taper on its back, and they are connected by golden ropes to each other, and ultimately to the sleigh.

Its been boxed up for the past N years (at least 7) since we are afraid to put it out for fear of the kids breaking it. But it looks lovely in its box. I think. Not sure anymore. I am confident the set would fetch at least $25 at a yard sale.

[Sibley]

My house is decorated for Christmas. I have done 0% of it - my roommate has done everything.

I did vacuum the living room 4 times last week and then the basement this weekend to pick up all the plastic needles from the fake tree (it's old, borrowed, and will eventually go bald).

[Jack]

I'm not particularly religious either -- which is fine, since Christmas is really a pagan holiday that the Christians co-opted anyway -- but I love Christmas decorations, and outdoor lights in particular. Right now I have mostly cool-white LED lights in the form of icicles and snowflakes, so my theme is more "winter" than "Santa" (let alone "angels" or "Jesus"). In the future, I have serious aspirations of going full Griswold: getting programmable lights and custom-making frames for them, setting them to music, posting the result on Youtube and pissing off my neighbors with the traffic and whatnot. I even have plans to install dedicated electrical circuits (e.g. in the roof eaves) when I finally get around to renovating.

Inside, I have a Christmas tree and some mistletoe, but that's about it. I'm considering getting a Festivus pole too (just 'cause it'd be funny). When I have kids I'll do more, such as putting up the train my parents got when I was a kid. (They'd buy an additional car each year, so it's a big set now.)

[zephyr911]

We put up a fairly traditional tree in our living room, and I have a small black one that I cover with Nightmare Before Christmas ornaments and other grim shit, both visible from the street. This year, we added a few lights to two small trees in our front yard. Other than that, we put a lighted wreath on our front door and not much else.

[irishbear99]

Curious as to how many of you take part in this tradition, and why.

I grew up in an extremely dysfunctional household, and Christmas was especially traumatic. As an adult, for the longest time I associated Christmas with drama and other unpleasant things, and therefore refused to decorate in order to maintain a peaceful holiday season.

A few years ago, I decided it was time to "take the holidays back"...reclaim them and make them special. Now I put up two trees (a 6' one in the living room and a small 2' on a display table) and hang garland over the entertainment center. I handmade all of the ornaments and a good portion of the other decorations. I'm still a bit of a rebel...I've rejected the "traditional" Christmas colors of red/green and instead I use blue/silver/white.

I'm glad I finally realized it was the people that made the holidays so awful, not the decorations. I just keep the decorations to a scale that is easily manageable, so set-up/clean-up is drama free, and the house looks pretty with all of the shimmer and sparkle.

Oh, I almost forgot...this year I also put up a small, 2' tree on my desk at work with homemade ornaments. The tree is white and the decorations are my favorite color - lime green.

[MandalayVA]

I also had trauma-filled childhood Xmases, not the least being my mother dying on 12/23 when I was twelve.  In fact Mr. Mandalay and I have lost all our parents around the holidays, with his father's death coming the day after Xmas last year.  Nevertheless, we have a little fiber-optic tree in the living room and our neighbors put up wreaths on all the units' doors and we just try to get through it.

[partgypsy]

Yes, it's just one of those things. Not too crazy.  A couple colored lights outside and a wreath with a led strand, Xmas tree with lights, and decorate the top of the mantle or mantles and top of the piano. A couple other touches teatowels in the kitchen and another wreath. I used to put a small artificial tree up in the children's room with decorations, but haven't done that the last couple years. Only thing haven't done yet this year is the wreath (haven't dug it out of the attic yet). I try to have a rule of one new ornament a year (something about that year) but otherwise have done little or no decoration shopping for years and years. Other than the wreath it fits in one big cardboard box/organizer.

[Khaetra]

I don't have fond memories of Christmas myself, so a small fiber optic tree and some greenery is as fancy as I get.  Sadly in my area there has been a huge uptick in stolen/damaged displays, so fewer people are putting up lights or decorating.  My neighbors had all of their big inflatables slashed last year, so they declined to replace them.

[Hadilly]

Yes! We cut down a really tall tree and it is up in the living room with white lights and ornaments. I also bought a eucalyptus leaf wreath at the farmer's market and hung it in the front door. Pretty but fairly minimal and recyclable.

[iris lily]

I am thankful,every year, that we live in a neighborhood where we all apparently share a common aesthetic. No one here puts up hideous  inflatables. There is no rule against them or shaming talk, no one does it, period.

It's tasteful electric candles in windows, white or single color lights on railings and outdoor plants. Muti-colored lights are as crazy as it gets on some houses.

[Jack]

This thread needs more pics.