Want to throw a bunch of shit on a stick and call it done? You do you, boo. But if you’ve watched every single Netflix Christmas movie, looked at your own tree and wondered why it doesn’t look like a tree in a Scottish castle, this guide is for you.
Christmas trees are like snowflakes, no two are alike. Unless they’re fake.
The way you decorate them is often a reflection of family, tradition, your state of mind, your relationship status, how much energy you have left in any given year and your star sign.
If you want to throw a bunch of shit on a stick, or indeed, a laundry rack and call it done, you do you, boo. We are now into our third annus horribilis and even the woman that made that phrase iconic has abandoned us. She was a famously stubborn Taurus too.
If you want to choose red as your dominant colour and accidentally-on-purpose freak out the entire world with a blood forest full of handmaids, stop it Scorpio.
If you want to abandon a tree altogether and opt instead to make a small chalet out of charcuterie to go with your butter board as this year’s trends dictate, go for it. A merry and rancid Christmas to the Librans among us.
We live in the Southern hemisphere where it is currently summer. Arguably erecting pines and decorating them like we live in a wee Scandinavian cottage or a draughty English estate is quite stupid. None of this logic has stopped me from dedicating my life to perfecting the art of very traditional Christmas decorating.
Is my true calling becoming a slave to the Kardashian empire as their on-call holiday decorator? Perhaps. Are my sun and moon signs both Virgo? Definitely. Are some people blessed to experience life with a variety of conflicting and interesting personality traits and not a double streak of perfectionism? Yes. Am I? No. Was my mother an interior designer and a teacher who loved complementary colour palettes almost as much as Wes Anderson? No lies there.
This guide does not stand in judgment of your tree, even if it would make my astrologically cursed eyes twitch. It exists for those of you who have watched every single Netflix Christmas movie, looked at your own tree and wondered why it doesn’t look like the 50 trees Brooke Shields flings her way round in A Castle for Christmas.
Tree selection
This is less of an issue with fake trees as they are manufactured in perfect conical form, but you’ll want to fluff them when you drag them out of their boxes. One guide I read said it takes 45 minutes to fluff a tree which is a really long time to be fluffing, but sure. If you’re after the smell, a colleague recommends buying a fancy Christmas-scented essential oil and sprinkling that among the branches.
If you prefer an odd-shaped, flawed natural tree, you’re a beautiful person and maybe a Pisces. If you’re after a tree that can handle the weight of the four to five stages of decorating I’m about to step through, you’re going to want a four to six-footer with a bushy base, even branch distribution and a gradual but naturally forming peak at the top.
Always check the back. Trees are often suspiciously leaned up against a fence to hide their flaws, so go with someone (a big-hearted Leo who is happy to get a rash), who can hold the tree and spin it so you can inspect it from all angles. Unless you’re displaying the tree in the middle of the room because you own a mansion, foliage holes can just be faced into a wall. What you don’t want is two gaping holes. A sneaky side hole.
The base
It seems ridiculous to buy something to put something in once a year but my Christmas tree stand is the best investment I’ve ever made. I used to put it in a bucket weighted with bricks and sand but would regularly cry when the tree would regularly slump at an odd angle.
This base, with its right sized hole and screws to hold the tree at the perfect angle, has saved my marriage. Positioning the tree into its base is the only step of decorating the tree my husband, a kind Cancer, is allowed to participate in. “I wish we could decorate the tree together,” he said one year. “Me too,” I said before dismissing him. Do not position the tree into its final and glorious position until you’ve done the lights.
You can buy little tree skirts to hide the bucket or tree stand which is, again, ridiculous but I just go with a bit of hessian sack so I can pretend the tree is still alive and I grew it. You can go to the trouble of placing it underneath whatever the tree is in and wrapping that like a plum pudding but I just wrap it around and tuck it in.
Lights
There is a tree-height-to-lights ratio but it was invented by Americans who are responsible for at least 10 different TV shows about decorating your home at Christmas and late stage capitalism. I will share it but I’m also not endorsing it, nor light volume shaming. What I will say is that lights in abundance hide all manner of sins. Technically, the ratio is 100 lights per foot of tree. So a 6 foot tree requires 600 lights. Yes, it seems like a lot. You’d be talking 52 metres of lights or three boxes of your standard home/DIY store lights.
Colour and pulsating rhythm is your choice here. I showed a colleague a photo of my tree and she said “ooo blue lights” and I realised I’d made the fatal mistake of buying cool white lights which show up blue in photos and not warm white lights but again, a me problem. Something to note though.
The number one rule is lights go on the tree first. As above, if you’ve got the room to leave the tree out from the wall or corner while you do the lights, I recommend this. Plug the lights in first to make sure they work. Swear at whoever put them away last year and did not coil them neatly. Once you’ve finished that, start at the base of the tree and, this will blow your mind, go up and down, not round and round. String them vertically from the bottom to the top. You can even do a little zigzag. This prevents dizziness but it’s also easier and uses fewer lights. I only learned this yesterday so have to entirely re-do my tree. Unless you’re specifically after a bondage tree aesthetic, you want to push the lights into the tree so it doesn‘t look like my thigh escaping fishnets.
Colour theme
You do not have to have one. I do. All the trees in American films do. Even the minimalist sad beige trees for sad beige children do. Red, green and gold remain traditional for a reason. Mine is white and gold this year. Silver is also good. I once tried blue and did not like it. Excuse me for sounding like I’m auditioning for an as yet unmade reality TV show, but colour themes create cohesion. If that makes you happy, I recommend this path and going with no more than three to four colours. If it doesn’t, go nuts on whatever comes home from kindy or, hot tip, the op shop.
The tree topper
In a break from movie tradition, I put the tree topper on first. It somehow creates a focal point and depending on tree girth is more practical to do first than leaning into the tree and knocking off the decorations when you do it at the end. Your topper can be whatever you like. Ours is the weeping angel from Dr Who which remains persistently relevant. Stars, angels, paper things, glued together ice cream sticks, they all work. You just need a focal point.
Hanging and grouping decorations
If you’re doing tinsel, popcorn strings, beads or ribbon, do this now. Start at the base and unlike the lights, go round and round, looping and swooping. Ideally this form of adornment is in sync with your colour scheme – there’s an interplay between lights, sparkle and decoration action so if you’ve gone with silver or blue, cool tone lights are better. If it’s golds and reds, warm tone lights.
Start with your heaviest and largest decorations. Push them into the tree so they’re better supported by the weight of the branches. They do not have to match but you want to space them out a bit so there is some element of symmetry and balance. You also don’t want a honking great decoration hanging off the three pine needles at the top of the tree so heavier and bigger decorations are best at the bottom. Once the bigger decorations are in, you’re looking to work out from the depths of the tree and start gap filling. Mid sized decorations go next, towards the middle of the tree and smaller, filler decorations can hang off the flimsier branches.
If you’ve gone with a colour theme and have a collection of sentimental decorations that don’t quite match, who cares? This is their time to shine so unless they weigh a solid kilo, bring these to the fore.
And you’re done. Please lie down, eat your meat house and wonder why you have busted your nuts being a perfectionist and shared it with the world, despite a promise to chill out and maybe explore the Uranus in Scorpio elements of your personality as dictated by the fateful double Virgo night upon which you were born.