It was whilst I was decorating my Christmas tree last year that I experienced one of those awful moments when you stop what you are doing to ask yourself why you are bothering.  I don’t particularly buy into Christmas. I am not religious and I am not a fan of the pure excess of it all. Everyone seems obsessed with over eating, drinking themselves into oblivion and spending fortunes on gifts that they can ill afford. Despite my cynicism, there I was with a rather large tree and a sea of sparkly things spending my evening vamping up my home.

Christmas Irony

I realised that whilst I have little interest in much of what masquerades as Christmas, I do love the accompanying transformation of the neighbourhood with all the light displays and the Christmas trees in the windows. I just love anything that sparkles and so, ironically, it turns out that Christmas was made for me!

I even largely enjoy the process of putting up my decorations. It is a time to let my creative juices flow and to fashion a look that raises the spirits. I am not so enthusiastic when it comes to taking it all down again. Glitter and needles everywhere and several trips to the loft generally ensue and my decorations have been known to stick around long beyond Twelfth Night simply because I have been unable to rouse myself into action.

Christmas Spirit

As I stopped work last Christmas by musings led me to understand that Christmas decorations are decidedly a good thing even if many other aspects of Christmas are not. On the cold and often miserable days of December and early January the decorations are uplifting. Decorating your home gives you a chance to work with family and friends and the whole process is somehow therapeutic. Financing the endeavour is certainly not!

Building a Collection

If you fancy extravagant displays in your home then it is going to cost you but Christmas comes every year and so you can build up your collection over time. If you start out with just a few decorations and then add some new pieces to your hoard every year you soon arrive at an impressive stash to work with. You must take care, however, to evolve a theme or colour scheme at the outset.

Always have that theme in your mind when you are buying your decorations otherwise you will end up with a random selection that will leave you with much that you cannot use to good effect. If you are going to use decorations year after year then it is best to stick to classic, timeless things rather than styles and colours that come and go. I built up an impressive cache of pink decorations which perfectly matched my old home but which now clash horribly with the more contemporary decorative scheme in my current abode.

Easter and Halloween

I am now busy building a new collection of red and gold pieces and perhaps it was this additional expenditure that gave me pause for thought. I am also working on my Easter and Halloween decorations. Having decided that decorating was a good idea I feel it only right that I extend my efforts to the other annual celebrations. I don’t have any affinity with those either but hey! I like creating displays as I suspect most people do which is precisely why we all decorate every year when it doesn’t really make any sense.