Do Americans really decorate .....

[BeaLola]

Every room and outside at Christmas ir is it just in the cheesy Christmas films currently on Netflix and the like ? I mean poinsettias and wreaths in the kitchen and huge displays outside ? In many ways it's amazing but is it just in the films ????

Some do, more than here

To get back to the point. I'm in NYC and people decorate their living rooms and maybe dining rooms if they have them or at the very least, many people put a wreath on the door. Some of the town houses and apartment buildings decorate outside, but not all of them.

The decorations tend to be fairly minimalist though, as we don't have a ton of storage, so real trees, fir boughs etc. are the norm. The City then holds special tree disposal events where you can take them to be mulched.

This instagrammer has decorations in her bedroom, which I've never seen in real life, but the mini trees and houses she has in her living room are similar to what my friends and I have.

This is exactly the same as the uk in 2022!

It is a thing. I make at least a half dozen different types every year and put them in decorated tins as gifts for people.

Wow, sounds like another chapter of "Everything I know about America comes from watching " (choose one: Hallmark channel films, Friends, that one time I went to Florida on holiday)

Decorations and lights are a bit cheaper in the States, certainly compared to here, so some people do tend to go all out for Christmas. (...and Halloween, Valentine's Day, Easter, Fourth of July, etc)

I grew up in America as a child of Irish immigrants, and they adored Christmas. In our family, we had 2 Christmas trees, loads of tinsel and garland draped everywhere in the house, and my dad would get the ladder out right after Thanksgiving each year to line our roof with red and green Christmas lights. In later years, they added reindeer and giant presents in the front yard. It was bonkers but it was fun. I really miss decent house Christmas light displays. The UK puts on a poor show by comparison, imo.

I'm American. Not all decorate outside like that, but many do. Putting lights out is pretty common, as are those ugly, huge, inflatable snow men, etc. One of my former neighbors used to sell those things, and every Christmas he'd put one of each type on his front lawn. You could barely see the house behind them.
Funny story: Our subdivision in Florida decorated the main entrance every year with two lit up reindeer, and every year the neighborhood teenagers would rearrange the deer to make it look like one was mounting the other. The Homeowner's Association would move it back, and the next night the teenagers would do it again. This would happen throughout the Christmas season. When driving in and out you never knew if you were going to see a bucolic winter scene or deer porn.
We moved away so I don't know if they still do it, but I hope so.

Cookie exchanges! I've kind of given up on Christmas cookie baking as I realized most of my neighbors and friends and coworkers probably don't want my homemade stuff, and also it's not as much fun if you aren't exchanging with other households. I miss it.

We certainly did not kill animals in biology class 😂

Also I love the deer porn story. A friend of a friend lived in a "historic neighborhood" (houses dating all the way back to the 1800s!!!) and spelled out "EAT ME" in big letters with fairy lights on their front porch. The neighborhood association was by within minutes to ask them to remove it 😂

Everything in Hallmark movies is entirely true to life and nothing you say will convince me otherwise.

Martha Stewart is a good source of Christmas cookie recipes and photos ... though I can guarantee yours will never come out looking as perfect as hers. Because you are not Martha Stewart.
https://www.marthastewart.com/1502381/christmas-cookie-recipes

I also miss opening presents on Christmas Eve. Maybe it was a German-American thing? Stockings on Christmas Day, but the wrapped gifts from each other on Christmas Eve. We didn't necessarily have a larger number of presents, it was just a different distribution for opening.

Christmas Eve opening of presents tends to be a Catholic thing in the states and Europe. I used to love visiting my Mexican friends for their Christmas Eve celebrations - tamales and posole - yum!

Oh, I see my comment did not show that I was actually quoting the other horrible post using that phrase. I totally agree with you - it is disgusting and unacceptable. NOT my sentiment, ever.

If I could afford it, I'd definitely pay someone to come and take it all away. In my old age, I'm getting quite grumpy about all the effort, only to take it down again in a month's time.

:) my post was not a response to OP

@allfurcoatnoknickers have you been down to dyker heights?! The best decorations in NYC (can be mega crowded) that I've experienced 😊

I had to dissect a frog in HS, more than 30 years ago. But even then we did not have to kill it.

They only do this in the advanced biology classes now. And many schools use AI on a computer vs. real dead frogs. Neither of my kids took anything more than the regular 10th grade biology and neither of them had to dissect anything.

@monsteronahill I have not! I saw a drone picture of it today though and it looks pretty fab.

No. Who’s Lucy? 😂

It is very strange though.

November = Thanksgiving, commemorating the mother of all intolerant “Christian” religious sects (they only split from England as the English weren’t intolerant enough..let that sink in) who got fed by the Natives (and we all know what was done to the Natives). Marking that on its own is wacky, but the wackiness continues on to the next month...with...

December = Christmas, commemorating the birth of Christ, a day that the folk commemorated in the previous month BANNED.

Its a total contradiction.

Now if thanksgiving involved being thankful that the reign of terror by the sect didn’t inflict more damage than it did, then that would make sense. And Christmas celebrated the following month would then also be seen as a celebration of free exercise of religion, a proverbial middle finger to the bigoted, persecuting cult who banned it. This is the case in England (without actually knowing it) as the laws enacted by the puritans were declared null and void in 1660, and Christmas was again freely celebrated in England (the puritanical hold in the US would be much more pervasive and long-lasting, with Christmas only becoming a federal holiday in 1870).... in 1917 American poet HL Mencken would also write about the continuing pernicious influence of the puritans in America...

......”The Puritan's utter lack of aesthetic sense, his distrust of all romantic emotion, his unmatchable intolerance of opposition, his unbreakable belief in his own bleak and narrow views, his savage cruelty of attack, his lust for relentless and barbarous persecution – these things have put an almost unbearable burden up on the exchange of ideas in the United States”

*Should say of course that the majority of those who partake in thanksgiving do so without any historical context, it’s just purely to give thanks (which as a concept is lovely, as are Americans who mark it).

I'm guessing OrangeCinnamonLatte meant Lucy Worsley (a great compliment in my view!)

It's fascinating stuff.

Oh wow... blush

We are in the U.K. but do most of the house. We have lights/wreath outside, trees in both living rooms, bunting/tinsel and candles in kitchen diner, horrendous tacky things in the kids rooms that they love, garlands on stairs, big baubles on light fittings, christmas hand towels and soap. The only room left largely alone is our bedroom but it’s still got some Christmas Lego.

I'd love to see some (non identifying) photos of people's decorations, especially from the US.

We do outside lights on the house and red and green bulbs in our porch and driveway lights.

Dining room has my Christmas china (yes, I have Christmas china) in the cabinet, a Christmas tablecloth, and our Nativity set.

My living room looks like a Christmas bomb went off. Tree decorated & lit up, mantel has fairy lights, berries & candles, and stockings hung. Stairs have candles on the stairs, colored fairy lights on the handrail and red/white colored yarn 'string' with Christmas clothespins to display the cards. There's also a shelf that displays all the random Santas I've collected through the years. The coffee table has a red 'Fair Isle' runner with a candle in a hurricane lamp and random crystal and glass dishes/jars with candy. I also have a couple of Christmas pillows on the sofa. Average age of my decs I'd say is, oh, maybe 15 - 20 years old.

Each year I try to cut back and each year my sons (in their 30s) eyeball the living room like police detectives and if I've left anything out they demand to know where it is and why it isn't out. Especially the M&M machine.

Thank you very much.

Yeah Christmas has so many special qualities (even if you are not a believer/follow a different faith) which best of all I would say is festive goodwill, but I love that extra layer of specialness knowing as a celebration it triumphed over the bigots who banned it.

I don't celebrate Christmas so don't decorate but in my (very diverse) neighbourhood we have everything: some houses are completely done up like National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, some have just a few strings of lights, and then some people don't do anything. Occasionally you get someone who goes completely over the top and their entire yard is covered. Other people put (electric!) candles in all the windows. On Hanukkah Jewish families put the menorah so you can see it from the window, and some families have more than one.

I have never seen anything in America that resembled a Hallmark movie, though. In many respects! When I was little we went to visit my grandparents in New York over Christmas one year, and they took us to see all the store windows (this was in the 1980s when there were lots of fancy department stores) and the tree at Rockefeller Center, and the houses out in Brooklyn which were famous even then. I was impressed!