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Christmas Decorations

Christmas Decorations

What would Christmas be without decorations? From the simplest garland of greenery, to the most elaborate displays of Christmas lighting, most people enjoy doing some kind of decorating for the season of Christmas.

About Christmas Decorations

Christmas decorating has been a tradition since the earliest Christmas celebrations. Before electricity, it was customary for homes and buildings to be decorated with ivy, holm, holly and bays. The ivy represented the coming of Jesus and the holly was believed to ward off witches and evil

Nativity scenes began becoming popular in 1223. The custom of placing a Christmas Tree in the house is thought to have begun in the 18th century in Germany but it wasn’t until the 1870’s that the trend began appearing in the United States. Many of the decorating practices of long ago are still carried on today.

Each year Americans spend over $18 billion on seasonal decorations, with the majority of that money going toward Christmas decorations. Much of the decorations sold are reused the following year, but each year holiday decoration displays are getting larger, brighter and more elaborate. The holiday season just wouldn’t feel right without sparkly lights, jolly Santa images and nativity scenes on the front lawn.

Today one of the most popular Christmas decorations is lights. You would be hard pressed to find a Christmas display that did not include a string of lights in some way or another. They are used to light our houses, our Christmas trees and accent many other decorations. We also commonly use angels, Santa Claus, reindeer, nativity scenes and Christmas bulbs when we are showing off our holiday spirit.

Lately, the trend in Christmas decorating is moving to the outside. More and more people are choosing to deck the halls outside the front door. Many towns offer contests within their communities and offer prizes to the best decorated home. Some homeowners go all out, covering every square inch of their house with lights and then timing the blinking bulbs to Christmas music. Elaborately decorated homes can draw quite a crowd. Many have begun the tradition of taking the family out for a drive to view the outdoor Christmas decorations each year.

Traditionally, people begin decorating for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving. Every year it seems as though the stores put their decorations up earlier and earlier though. It’s starting to be common for stores such as Walmart and Target to begin displaying their Christmas merchandise at the same time as their Halloween gear. The reasoning behind it is to get shoppers into the buying spirit earlier and hopefully get them to spend more over a longer stretch of time. I don’t know about you, but I’m not falling for it. Oh wait…..is that a dancing Santa?

Related Images

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Palestinian Greek Orthodox Christians attend Christmas mass at the Orthodox Saint Porfirios church in Gaza City on January 7, 2012. The Orthodox Church celebrates Christmas and other religious holidays according to the Julian calendar, while other Christian churches have adopted the later Gregorian calendar.

NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 06: Egyptian Coptic Christian men and boys put on their robes as they celebrate Christmas Nativity Liturgy, the start of Christmas, at the Coptic Orthodox Church of St. George on January 6, 2012 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Like the Eastern Orthodox Church in Russia, Copts still use the Julian calendar and thus celebrate Christmas on January 7. St. George Church, like other Coptic churches around the country, has witnessed a surge of Christians fleeing Egypt since the start of the Arab Spring. In Egypt human rights groups estimate that as many as 100,000 Copts have left Egypt since the revolution as churches have been burned and Christians increasingly persecuted by the Muslim majority.

Christian Orthodox monks tour the Church of the Nativity in the biblical West Bank town of Bethlehem on January 6, 2012, as Orthodox Christmas celebrations kicked off in the traditional birthplace of Jesus to the sound of bagpipes and protests by Palestinians accusing church leaders of selling land to Israelis.

NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 05: Michael Borcina embraces a priest outside of St. Thomas Episcopal Church following a funeral for three girls killed in a Christmas Day fire on January 5, 2012 in New York City. Hundreds of people attended the service to remember Lilian Badger, 9, and her twin sisters Sarah and Grace, 7, who died in a fire in Stamford, CT on Christmas morning. The girls' mother, Madonna Badger, and her friend Michael Borcina were the only survivors of the fire, attributed to a bag of smoldering ash and embers left in a first-floor mudroom. Officials reported the girls had wanted the ash out of the fireplace so that Santa Claus could come through the chimney.

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Christmas Decorations