In Ireland (where I am) it is common to have a Christmas tree with lights on display in the living room window...it’s wonderful going past the houses and seeing them (especially when the room light is off which is common). You will then also get a house that is completely covered in lights/decorations.
Its an interesting topic this as Christmas is very un-American. Christmas was not widely celebrated in America until 1870 (it was seen as an English custom after the revolutionary war and it wasn’t celebrated by many including g.washington). It has always been a public holiday in England and Ireland, but only became a federal holiday in the US in 1870. Thanksgiving (which marks Pilgrims (puritans) getting fed) is more a US custom. I find it strange they also mark Christmas a month later as the bigoted, persecuting Protestant pilgrims shunned Christmas (“catholic invention” and “rags of the beast”) and fined anyone caught celebrating it, before it was outlawed completely. The puritans in England also banned Christmas but their influence was tiny in England (puritan laws were declared null and void following the restoration in 1660) in comparison to America.
I love Christmas even more for its rebellious aspect in defying bigots. BBC article on this:
www.bbc.com/culture/article/20141219-when-christmas-carols-were-banned
“During the Puritans’ rule of England, celebrating on 25 December was forbidden. Singing yuletide songs then was a political act, writes Clemency Burton-Hill.
When it comes to revolutionary protest songs, what springs to mind? Billie Holliday’s Strange Fruit? Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ In The Wind? Sam Cooke’s A Change is Gonna Come? I’m guessing the humble Christmas carol is probably low on your list of contenders, but in mid-17thCentury England, during the English Civil War, the singing of such things as The Holly and the Ivy would have landed you in serious trouble. Oliver Cromwell, the statesman responsible for leading the parliamentary army (and later Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland), was on a mission to cleanse the nation of its most decadent excesses. On the top of the list was Christmas and all its festive trappings.
To Cromwell and his fellow Puritans, though, singing and related Christmas festivities were not only abhorrent but sinful. According to historical sources, they viewed the celebration of Christ’s birth on 25 December as a “popish” and wasteful tradition that derived – with no biblical justification – from the Roman Catholic Church (‘Christ’s Mass’), thus threatening their core Christian beliefs. Nowhere, they argued, had God called upon mankind to celebrate Christ’s nativity in such fashion. In 1644, an Act of Parliament effectively banned the festival and in June 1647, the Long Parliament passed an ordinance confirming the abolition of the feast of Christmas.
But the voices and festive spirits of English men, women and children were not to be so easily silenced. For the nearly two decades that the ban on Christmas was in place, semi-clandestine religious services marking Christ’s nativity continued to be held on 25 December, and people continued to sing in secret. Christmas carols essentially went underground – although some of those rebellious types determined to keep carols alive did so more loudly than others. On 25 December 1656, a a member of parliament in the House of Commons made clear his anger at getting little sleep the previous night because of the noise of their neighbours’ “preparations for this foolish day…” Come the Restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, when legislation between 1642-60 was declared null and void, both the religious and the secular elements of the Twelve Days of Christmas were allowed to be celebrated freely. And not only had the popular Christmas carols of previous eras survived triumphant but interest in them was renewed with passion and exuberance: both the 18th Century and Victorian periods were golden eras in carol-writing, producing many of the treasures that we know and love today – including O Come All Ye Faithful and God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen.“