How I Decorate My Home for the Holidays

I grew up in a home where we had decorations from the Hallmark store for every holiday all year long. But Christmas was the big holiday of the year. It actually took my mother about a week to decorate the artificial white Christmas tree with hundreds of glass ornaments in shades of pink and tinsel-tied pink satin bows. Coming from that background, my holiday decorations seem downright plain. They are simple, but very satisfying to me and my husband.

My general philosophy for decorating my home for any holiday is to focus on the meaning of the holiday and what is occuring in the natural world.

In my house, the tree is the central decoration. When we lived in California, we lived in a forest of fir trees and we could just cut one from the woods on the hill behind our house. But we went to various family-owned Christmas tree farms and Larry would chop the tree.

We have been buying our tree in Christmas tree lots here in Florida, but I finally found a tree farm within reasonable driving distance, so we're going to take a drive there this year. I'm looking forward to getting an evergreen native to Florida. The trees in the lots are all the common varieties shipped in from more northern states.

I always decorate my tree the same, year after year. I just put a few strings of tiny white lights on it, and a metal gold star on the top. To me, this represents the light of spirit shining through the physical form of the tree and it looks very beautiful to me. It also symbolizes the ancient idea of keeping the light going through the dark days of winter. I wrap a length of green cotton flannel printed with Christmas trees around the base to hide the tree stand. We usually get a small tree--about three to four feet--and put it on a little table and put our gifts under it on the floor.

I have only one tree ornament. It's a very beautiful fine art glass ornament in the shape of a sun. I don't take it out until the Winter Solstice, when the sun returns and days begin to grow longer.

The other thing I do to decorate for the holidays is to bring out the Christmas linens. I have cloth napkins and tablecloths in red and green with holly patterns and kitchen towels with similar colors and patterns. I have red and green plaid sheets that I put on the bed.

And we hang a string of colored lights around the edge of the roof outdoors.

That's about it. Very simple. But it's enough so everyone knows it's Christmas around here.