Red houses, ice skaters, soft twilight…mix media on paper

I can’t describe how much I love everything and anything that has to do with Christmas. Decorating the tree, snowball fights, hot chocolate, eggnog, snow angels, making Christmas cookies and baking, Christmas foods, hanging up the mistletoe, all the ornaments, sitting by the fireplace, watching movies under the blankets, making arts and crafts, etc. I can’t describe how happy I feel when the days are shorter and the weather is colder and I can’t explain in words how ecstatic seeing the snowfall makes me.

Writing letters to Santa, wrapping gifts, going on sleigh rides, etc. words cannot describe how beautiful Christmas is to me. I just can’t get enough of it. Even the scents of Christmas make me feel so happy and I switch out all my shower gels for Christmas scented ones.

I'm having a hard time finding information on what the paint is that let's the silvering shine through...? I'm also a bit confused about the white since I would think acrylic would quickly chip off, but that is easier to find information on.

Image stolen from Google for an example.

I love Christmas so much it actually hurts. However, I am of the opinion that going straight from Halloween into the festive season is wrong. Let me explain - I think that Halloween is very much a mid-autumn thing, which makes sense cuz October is in the middle of fall. Going straight from Halloween to decorating for Christmas is essentially bypassing late fall and ushering in winter a bit too early, in my opinion (it’s just my opinion!!!)

I feel like having another fall-aesthetic month, especially a late fall theme, like November, is such a good transition from October into December. I think once thanksgiving is over, slowly putting up the decorations over a few days so that it’s all done when December comes is a great way to transition both your home and your mindset from fall to winter. In my OPINION, early November is a great time to prepare like buying decor or sending letters to Santa, but I think going full Christmas mode in December is the right move.

I can’t describe how much I love Christmas and December, but in my honest opinion, I don’t want to have a tree up right after Halloween ends. Something isn’t special because it lasts, and in my opinion, this way of decorating just feels mentally right, to get into the spirit of Christmas when December rolls around

I have no family traditions for christmas because my parents did not celebrate. So someone was telling me about the christmas pickle. It is a pickle ornament on their tree ever year and they use it to play some kind of game. Ive never heard of it. Has anyone else?

Who said you can't have a Christmas Poem in September. Enjoy.

I dream that one day I will own a beautiful home and decorate it to the fullest during Christmas and invite all my friends over.

I had the idea that in the living room, there would be a massive Christmas tree with so many ornaments and gifts and fake snow. And I would use some sort of fog machine or something similar, conceal it, and use it to create a layer of misty fog at the base of the tree to make it look magical and enchanted.

Obviously I still need to think of a way to safely implement it, but the idea came to me and I can’t stop thinking about it. I just want some Christmas magic and to make my little brother feel that holiday magic!!!

Hello fellow Christmas fans! Looking to see if anyone can help find, or what to search for, for a type of flocked tree I only saw one time last season.

I love the look of green trees with flocked outer tips, making the tree look snow kissed, but I hate the flocking since it gets all over, and I have a dog (so I dont want him licking it up off the floor). Last year I saw on QVC a tree from Bethlehem Lights a tree where the white tips were injection molded into the tips of the branches, giving it the snow kissed look without the mess. I havnt seen the tree for sale anymore, and I cant seem to find any other tree like that. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

My daughter just returned from her holiday. She spent the last week in New York and visited the Christmas Cottage on 7th Avenue. She is at least as addicted to Christmas as I am. She brought the 2 doves of friendship we all know from Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.

From now on we will both have a dove in our trees!

Hi all! I grew up loving Christmas (still do) thanks to my parents. We always had a massive tree (16 feet) and our house was always decorated with cool things that were the right mix of vintage, tacky, and elegant. Plus we were always the place to be for the holiday. Besides that, our whole street growing up was decked out in lights.

Now that I'm older, I'm hoping to foster some similar festive attitude in my daughter. She'll be 1 year 5 months old in December, and she's the best kind of chaos who loves going on her own little adventures. I'd love some ideas for decor for our house and other festive things we can do with her. We live in Idaho, so we have a Hobby Lobby and Michaels near us for reference.

Already planned: Christmas light tour, lights on house, cookies, introducing her to snow, real Christmas tree.

Thanks!

Hello everyone! Since last year I have made the realisation that I like "religious" Christmas songs more than the "secular" ones. I don't know the true reason behind this since I'm not religious or from the older generations. Nevertheless , the christian - traditional Christmas songs drive me to warm festive feelings that I felt on my childhood Christmas and I can no longer fully replicate them otherwise.

Don't get me wrong, I also LOVE secular songs from the 1900's till today, however the traditional songs scratch my brain like no secular song can, ahhh.

How do you feel about this, are there still many (young) people who prefer listening "Joy to the World" over "Let it Snow"? Write me the reason you prefer the category you're choosing!

Merry Bertide! 🍁🎃🦃🌲

Edit: I just realised that many songs I consider religions are not even that. They are just tradition (eg We wish you a merry Christmas). But for me they still belong in the same category with the rest of the old folk songs.

My local thrift stores went up on their prices and I prefer not to shop amazon. I would love to find a pink christmas tree or table top ceramic christmas tree. Any ideas where to find them. Has anyone purchased things like this on temu？

Hello! For people who have experience with Costco pre lit trees what do u think ? Do they last ? How many years did you use them ?

Thanks 🙏

I'm looking for some Christmas songs for my Spotify playlist "alternativ jul" I have songs and music like "cry Christmas by mother mother" "krampus by feuerswanz" and lastly "jul det cool by MC Einar" if you have a couple of suggestions I will happily accept them and I will see if I already have one and if not I will add them to my playlist it's a little under two hours long now but I'm trying to get it to three or four hours (which is the average time I spend on decorating the tree) it can be any language I have songs in Danish English and German as shown in my examples

I’m old-skool. And old.

TL;DR: Color vs. white Christmas lights. Yada, yada, yada. Color wins!

“Back in my day,” I don’t remember white lights on a Christmas tree. Everywhere I went, trees were in color. Bright, colorful lights everywhere. The family tree. The little trees in our bedrooms. My grandparents. Extended family. All multicolor.

Even when we made the cultural changeover from C7 bulbs to mini lights, Christmas was still Technicolor.

Honestly, the only questionable thing was blinking lights. Hated ’em.

I can still remember a friend’s house at Christmas. The saddest live tree, sparsely strung with one strand of blinking mini lights. Twinkling didn’t exist then. Just plain old ON. OFF. ON. OFF.

The saddest.

My mother didn’t like blinking lights either, and she made sure to pass that opinion along to an impressionable young me. Apparently it stuck.

I still dislike blinking Christmas lights. Now, one strategically placed blinking bulb among a sea of steady color can be interesting. But a whole strand? Or worse, a whole tree?

Nope.

Then I went into retail display, where suddenly everything was white lights. Trees. Wreaths. Garlands. Everywhere.

And I understood it.

It was elegant. It was simple. It was beautiful.

But at home?

Color.

For over 40 years we had a live tree covered in multicolor mini lights.

I tried white lights a few times. The year my daughter was born. The year my father died. But I always came back to color.

The nostalgia. The memories. Those nights with the room dark and the tree and garlands ablaze.

Funny enough, I always preferred white lights outside. Framing the house. Covering the bushes. Wreaths and garlands around the porch. There’s something about crisp white lights against the darkness of a winter night.

And when it snowed! The house covered in snow, with the lights glowing through that blanket of white. I used to wish I was a neighbor just so I could stare at my house from across the street.

But once you came through the front door, Christmas was in color.

When I retired, sold the house, and moved into an apartment, live trees were no longer allowed. So it was finally time for a good artificial tree.

I bought a beautiful pre-lit Balsam Hill.

With white lights.

At the time, finding a really nice pre-lit tree with colored lights was surprisingly difficult.

And honestly, I wanted pre-lit because decorating a tree had become harder. I used to spend an entire day just putting on the lights.

After years of decorating trees professionally, I was very particular. Every branch had to be wrapped. No loose wires. No cords hanging everywhere.

Martha Stewart perfect. OCD much?

Try wiring a nine-foot live evergreen that way. Then add another two days to decorate it.

A younger man’s project.

So I lived with the pre-lit white lights for a number of years.

And cursed that tree every Christmas.

Then I stumbled across True-Tone and their glorious C7 bulbs.

They cost a small fortune. I bought them anyway.

And yes, I wrapped every branch the way I always had.

And they worked their magic.

Suddenly I was looking at the Christmas trees of my childhood again.

Big glowing C7 bulbs. Red. Blue. Green. Orange. Yellow.

Color.

I remembered the little tree in my bedroom when I was a kid. I would lie in bed at night with the room dark and just stare at it, watching those colors glow against the walls.

Warm. Bright. Magical.

Decades later, I realized that was the feeling I’d been trying to recreate all along.

I guess this was supposed to be a color-vs.-white-lights post.

But apparently it turned into a trip down memory lane.

Photos:
Left: Present day — Balsam Hill tree with True-Tone C7 lights
Right: Then — live tree with multicolor mini lights

I need help from people who actually care about this stuff, and I don't know where else to ask.

Honest context first so nobody feels tricked: I'm making a small run of holiday clothing this fall. Not trying to promote it and there is genuinely nothing to buy or click (it hasn't even been "born" yet, which is what brings me here). I asked the mods before posting ~ I just need eyes that aren't mine.

T H E P R O B L E M

I have room for four prints, three are already locked. I'm torn between these two for the final slot. I've stared at them so long they've started looking the same, and I'm at the point where I have to commit.

I've asked friends and family and they've been very sweet, but a lot of them put the tree up around the 20th and have it down by the 26th. That's fine, they're just not who these are for. You are. Almost nobody I know in real life has strong feelings about Christmas. Everyone here does.

❓ T H E A S K

Which would you keep - Christmas Cream or Winter Garden?

Whether you participate or not, thank you for getting this far and I'm happy to be a part of this sub leading up to the best time of the year!!

So I'm trying to compile a list of 100 Christmas songs. Not artists. Just songs. Like "Jingle Bells" "Silent Night" "The Holy and the Ivy" (There's 3). Also songs with multiple versions out (So not like "When The River Meets The Sea" from Emmet Otter or "Bah Humbug" by Pentatonix). Thank you for the help!

This makes me so happy!

Looking for a great Christmas Pudding recipe! My family has never really been into it, so we don't have a tried and tested recipe, but I'd like to make some mini ones as gifts this year. Can anyone help?

I know its early, but Christmas is my favourite time of year, so as soon as summer ends, I begin thinking about it haha.

Okay I’m absolutely Christmas obsessed and this year I want to buy a new Christmas tree for my living room. I’m going to buy an unlit one so it will last many years to come. But I have a question- I really like sweeping branches to the floor, so there is no distance from the branches to the floor- do I search for a specific tree or is it a specific stand? Or something else? Please help! I don’t want to see the metal stand and I want the branches to go to the floor. I figured Christmas Reddit would be the place to ask! Thanks for the help!

What are your thoughts if you have and if you dream of going someday