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 ????

What a lovely memory!

That sounds like so much fun.

I think I would just about kill to be in a gated community in Florida right now. I spent some wonderful holidays near Stuart Florida with friends but that was more than 20 years ago and they sold their home.

I know someone who gets professional in, outdoors is amazing she has five indoor trees. It all goes against the business though.

I wonder if that takes the fun out of it. I think it would for me.

We have a family member who worked for years with a company that hangs the lights on mansions in the south then comes back and removes them. Some setups cost more than a house! $175K is a number I heard. I can’t even fathom that!

Just about all of my memories of my beloved mum are lovely. We were so lucky to have her. She truly made our house a home. I remember thinking when DS1 was born that if I could be half the mum to him that my mum was to us he would be a very lucky boy.

She used to put her swan on a flat mirror on the dining room table and put greenery around it so it appeared to be a swan on a tiny pond. I have no idea what happened to it, but I assume she either gave it away at some point or it got broken and tossed. One of these days I'll see if I can find one in an antique shoppe.

💕

I'm American and my mother did this. We had a tree in the upstairs living room and downstairs and tv room and my sister and I both had small trees in our bedrooms. The house was decorated top to bottom. However, my parents were fairly minimal on the outdoor lights.

@RLScott
Absolutely agree with loving to see people’s trees in their windows with room lights off.
So eminently cozy.
Loved seeing them since childhood. ( A long time ago for me!)

And now comes the week of UNdecorating. It's fun when it goes up. It's fun when you're enjoying it. But oh, it's a pain in the arse to take it all down and store it away!

How do over decorators deal with taking all that crap down in January?

We take our time. A bottle of wine helps too.

I'm pretty organized and go room by room. I have labeled boxes and lists of what goes where. The inside will all be done by Wednesday. It's getting DH to take the outside lights down and carry the boxes upstairs that will take the extra 4 days!

I leave my lights strung up in my back porch all year. It's a three season enclose porch thats useful as cold food storage in winter. I'll turn the lights on again for the Fourth of July. I have deck lights too, which I'll light on summer nights when I'm sitting out there slapping mosquitos reading.

*enclosed

I am american and yes we are very very enthusiastic about decorating for christmas. The movies don’t exaggerate. Though the amount of wealth is often exaggerated. Our bathroom was snowman themed. Hilariously it looks like you are opening the snowman’s mouth when you lift the lid to the toilet. 😂😂😂 We get a big storage box and save the decorations for next year and just gradually hoard more and more every year. Only slowing down on our collection when something breaks or the lights burn out!

It does depends on where you live though. For example I am from Texas and we are BIG BIG into decorating. But if you live in certain states they are a bit more relaxed or some might decorate much at all. So I guess it depends on where you go? If you want a big show go visit Texas. I highly recommend santa land! 😁

A bit late to the thread but we do the living room, kitchen, hallway, landing and bedroom and outside and we are in the UK.

We love Christmas!!

I'm not American but I decorate every room and go all out on the outside lights and decorations. I LOVE Christmas 🎅 🎄

Just came back from new york and went to dyker Heights. They go all out.

I decorate every room in the house and I'm in the UK. 5 Christmas trees and a large arch in the kitchen. I usually do outdide lights but I couldn't be bothered getting the ladder out this year.

Please educate this ignorant american here though because this subject leads me to wonder. I always naturally assumed that british people would be just as enthusiastic or more enthusiastic about christmas as I naturally assumed that christmas originated over there in Europe. Any historian nerds here to enlighten me if this is not the case? I suppose it’s possible that when it was brought over to the states we just eventually started celebrating differently? 🧐

Yes, many of them do. I have a friend who has 8 Christmas trees plus all the paraphernalia from the entrance Hall to the ensuite…

And don’t start me on Halloween…

um, in high school biology 1983, we dissected a worm & a frog (actually I couldn't cope with the frog): we certainly didn't kill any creatures ourselves, though. I never hear of that before. Nonsense

I had Mexican-American Christmas this year in CA: my BFF really did make about 6 dozen cookies which her daughter (UPS manager) spent hours bagging up before handing out to UPS drivers in days before Xmas. We also had tamales & tamales (both TexMex & Cally style, California ones r much nicer). + Champurrado. There were decorations and matching PJs. Some front yards were highly lit up. Our Mex-American host went to church Xmas eve & Xmas morning both.

We went to a few other homes in CA & FL (Anglo & mixed heritage, my family gathering looks like a UN convention), nobody had 'every room' decorated but all had at least a tree & some lights outside.

I must learn to make my own tamales.

I lived in a gorgeous US Colonial town for a while and yes all the old houses decorate (tastefully) with candles, trees & wreaths. The shutters are left open so you can walk around and look in. So beautiful. I miss Old Town A. Compared to my UK mediaeval village where neighbours think that flashing blue icicles are tasteful.

I live in Scotland and I decorate as many rooms as possible. Probably not to an American scale, but I have special Christmas crockery, garlands and lights on top of the kitchen worktops and a mini tree and candles on the centre of the table. The kids each have their own tree in their rooms. My staircase has garlands with pink feathers and pink candy canes and bonbons. The living rooms has the main tree, garlands above the fire place and across the dresser with special festive knickknacks. Bathrooms have tinsel and fairy lights and a few colour coordinating cute decorations hanging from handles etc. I have wreaths on most doors inside the house.

I didn’t realise this wasn’t more common in the UK. My mum decorates the two living rooms, main bathroom, kitchen and hallway. I’m sure my sisters do too. I have at least one friend who also goes all out.

I haven’t really got much going on outside though - every year I say I’ll do more there and every year it’s just a wreath on the door and some fair lights round a little potted tree.

This! It gets put away, after a fashion, and I try and keep a list of what is where (outdoor decs go in the garage, but DH isn't good at keeping track). Just one year, before I am too old to bother with the whole malarkey, I'd like to get everything down at the same time and put away, without finding the odd rogue bit later, which never gets put away, and stays in the bureaux or somewhere, until it hopefully gets reunited with its pals when the next decorating cycle comes round! Tis a bit stressful, though obs a first world problem.

Not sure why you say Americans only....I see plenty of British doing the same in London and other nationalities. I think it depends on the person.