There is nothing like the bright Christmas colors we see once a year. The combination of red and green can be a little overwhelming with everything so neutral nowadays, but that’s exactly why these bold colors matter. Although Christmas is so much more than just the decor, we rely on these decorations to seize the holiday spirit. This spirit goes back for centuries, it’s pretty difficult to imagine red and green symbolizing anything other than Christmas. Within the origin of Christmas, the “typical” colors are known to be red, symbolizing Jesus’s sacrifice, green, symbolizing eternal life, and gold/white symbolizing divine light/royalty. In today’s world, Christmas is lacking those joyful cheery colors it’s known to have. Before the 21st century, Christmas was full of colorful lights, ornaments, and decorations.
No doubt that Christmas is meaningful regardless of HOW you embrace it as long as you have a good time, but this shift between a traditional Christmas and the holiday we know it to be today has huge social impacts. Everyone is often focused on the aesthetic matching their life. We tend to forget about the joy in just celebrating Christmas, and these decorations remind us why we love to do so. There’s nothing wrong with an ideal Christmas, why change it? Colors like beige and gray are not “wrong” but modifying holidays ends up taking away from the original religious, and historical meaning we know and love.
People in today’s age are so bent on changing what’s known to be a colorful Christmas, to a “beige and bland” Christmas, when there’s actually nothing wrong with the “tacky” traditional colors that Christmas is known to bring. Social standards and aesthetic views are shifting the value of true Christmas themes. Yes, you can choose any color for your Christmas, but that switch is diminishing the nostalgia and memories that older generations have developed towards Christmas, and preventing the younger ones from doing the same. Therefore, future generations won’t get to experience that same memorable and festive Christmas.
The festivity that the “tackyness” of Christmas brings is something that beige and gray just can’t provide, down to the fun of ugly sweaters and lopsided gingerbread houses to the clashing ornaments we decorated the tree with long before anyone cared about aesthetics. A desire to keep your house modern is understandable but you don’t have to change the standard Christmas in order to do that. When done right, these bold shades like red and green can adapt to your established goals for your home during the Christmas season. There is still time to craft your own traditional yet stylish Christmas!
