Online Christmas Magazine

Outdoor Christmas Decorations: A Big Hit with Homeowners

People get to dress up all of the time: we put on our best suit or our nicest dress to go to weddings and fancy parties, we put on the most ludicrous costumes for Halloween, we dress down but still up for those highly anticipated dates with that really gorgeous person... It's lots of fun, and it tells other people who you are, or at the very least how you would like to be seen. But a house is always just a house: four walls, a roof, and maybe some nice balconies and a bright coat of paint and some nice looking shrubs and trees to set it apart from the other ones on the block - but that's it. Untill Christmas comes around...

Putting up grandiose, beautiful or just flashy outdoor Christmas decorations is not a new trend, but it's definitely become more popular in recent years. To the point where in some neighbourhoods you almost need to don sunglasses for fear of being blinded by the radiance of it all. It might have become a bit of a race ("look how big my decorations are - and how fancy!"), but fundamentally there's nothing wrong with a bit of outdoor decorating. On the contrary: Christmas is a period of sharing, and by all engaging in the same activity and making your neighbourhood a more beautiful place, if only for a few weeks, you and your neighbours are partaking in and spreading the spirit of the holiday.

There are many ways of decorating your home and garden: the first and most obvious is of course to wrap the most beautiful tree in your yard in hundreds, if not thousands of tiny twinkling lights. You can get nets of lights (without a doubt the easiest way of going about lighting up your yard) or you can get garlands (which can be applied more creatively). Another big hit is a fake snowman (hey, it might be winter, but that doesn't mean it will be snowing - or even cold enough to keep a snowman from melting into a brownish blob, for that matter): kids love them, and they will send you right back to your childhood as well. And everybody loves a nice round of reminiscing...

Recently, Santa statues have become immensely popular too, and there are loads of different ones. One disadvantage: they only look good on your roof, so don't invest in one of these if you're afraid of heights - or need a new roof. Our personal favorite is a Santa that you need to attach to your chimney, so it looks like the good man is making his way into your house with a big bag of presents. But the bestseller is without a doubt the big Santa on his sled statue, with or without Rudolph and his reindeer colleagues. You need a pretty big roof to pull that one off, though.

If you want to keep things a bit more simple and understated, then go for a nice wreath on your front door. Most importantly, it will make your guests feel welcome. And there's nothing nicer at Christmas than to be spreading the joy.