By: Asherra

In the past few years the gothic community has been relatively blessed with the popularity of classic Victorian Christmas decorations featuring a dark pallet of rich velvets, deep reds, blues, and greens. Simple decorations for elegant holiday décor including white or cream colored lights, velvet table runners with gold or silver lacing, and beautiful velvet bows. Last year I even managed to find a beautiful tree topping angel decorated in silver wings and a black velvet dress (Of course I lost it in my move.) This year our luck is running out! The holiday fad this year is (dare is say it?!?) RETRO! Yes, that’s right folks. This year expect to see strings of large multi colored Christmas lights, kitschy miniature ornaments, and a definite lack of black. While you may still be able to find ornaments and decorations to suit your gothic style, the pickings are going to be definitively sparser. Later on in this article I will give you a few crafty ideas to add to your décor collection however at this point, I’ll start you off with a few general decorating tips.

Lets say for the moment that you are starting out with nothing, no decorations whatsoever. Your living room/ family room/ bathroom (you never know, people put Christmas trees in weird places!) simply has your everyday decorations and a plain Christmas tree. First of all you are going to want to assess your decorating space for its color scheme. The best way to do this is by blurring your eyes and looking for the dominant color in the room. If your living room is mostly blue for example you’ll want to decorate accordingly with whites, blues, and blacks. Black, white, and grey usually go pretty much with all colors. Be careful when choosing a contrasting color. Red and green may work well together, red and orange… eh…not so much. Stay with this color pallet above all else.

Secondly you are going to want to pick a ‘theme’. Par exemplar, stay with a ‘Victorian’ or ‘ice castle’ theme. Your theme can be anything your heart desires, even ‘Star Wars’ or ‘Hawaii’. Make sure when you are purchasing your decorations, each piece fits into your color pallet first and this theme second. If you have existing ‘every day’ decorations that don’t fit into this theme, you might want to put some of those away for the time being so that your room keeps an over all flow.

One big mistake that I ALWAYS used to make involved the number of decorations I put out. Before I knew any better, my living room looked like Santa’s cellar of rejected toys. Every piece of holiday décor I owned was on display until Valentines Day! Please, learn from my pain and don’t do this to yourself!! Pick and choose a few decorations that you enjoy and place them randomly around the house. The rule usually is ‘no more than one piece of décor per piece of furniture!’ You don’t need the singing Rudolph doll, the tissue box cozy your grandmother knitted for you, AND the big porcelain Nightmare Before Christmas candy dish you got at Bats day all sitting out on the table. Just the candy dish on the coffee table, a door hanging on the patio door, and Christmas style hand towels in the bathroom will be sufficient. A few well placed candles and Christmas card string also work well. Remember, less is more when it comes to decorating.

I realize that through this entire article I have only made mention of ‘Christmas’ decorations and I would like to qualify that term. I use the term ‘Christmas’ loosely and not solely in the sense of the Christian holiday. I realize that in the gothic community there is a large percentage of pagan and other religions. I personally am a Pagan and don’t celebrate ‘Christmas’ as such but rather I practice ‘Yule’. Of course, due to our society’s commercialization of this holiday… and my super cool hypocritical nature…I still decorate for ‘Christmas’. What!? And give up presents?!? Yeah RIGHT!! In this section of the article I would like to give those pagan readers some decorating tips for their Yule festivities.

Other than the typical Yuletide celebrations and décor that one can find in many Wiccan and pagan primers, decorations are not that dissimilar from Christmas décor; the winter ‘Christmas’ tree is also a traditional pagan symbol. Don’t discount it simply because of its current Christian connotations. One decorating tip I found interesting was one I took from my roommate. Instead of having a Christmas tree inside the house, place a small tree outside and decorate it with entirely edible and biodegradable decorations. Make popcorn strings, cranberry strings, even macaroni strings and drape the tree with those. Ornaments can be made of pine cones or sugar cookies spread with peanut butter and rolled in bird seed. You can also use wool thread to wrap around the tree. This will be a wonderful treat for the wild animals that live around your area. It’s also very easy to dispose of after the holiday season.

For your indoor décor, think natural and simple. One piece I quite like is a small ceremonial broom. More often than not, crafts stores will carry plain decorative ‘brooms’ made of wicker and straw grass. If not, they are not difficult to make by simply binding some dry long grass with cord. Decorate this broom with velvet ribbon and small charms, even dab some essential oils onto it to make is smell nice.

In times when I have not been able to put up a ‘Christmas’ tree (college dorms, one room in an atheist apartment) I have simply set up an altar dedicated to Yule and the winter solstice. Mine have always been small however this can be done in a full size room in place of the tree. This altar should be created from personal experience and out of your own desires, thusly I wont be giving tips on how to set up this alter. If anyone needs help, please message the Angst-Zine forums and I can attempt to give personalized advice.

As mentioned earlier, I wanted to give my readers a few crafty tips to create their own dark holiday decorations.

One of my favorite holiday crafts projects is making my own holiday ornaments. To do this you will need: a set of clear glass orb ornaments. You can get these at most crafts stores during the holidays: glitter of your color choice (I prefer black or red), Elmer’s glue, cheap bottles of acrylic paint in your color of choice and water.

Procedure: Mix some of the Elmer’s glue with water in a small paper cup so that it spreads relatively easy. Remove the ornament hook from the glass orb and place it to the side. Pour the glue mixture into the ornament. Cover the opening with your thumb and shake the mixture so that it coats the entire inside of the ornament. Pour the liquid back into the cup and place that to the side. After a minute or two pour a small amount of glitter in to the ornament, cover the opening and repeat the shaking process. Let that dry for about 20 minutes. After the glitter is dry pour in your acrylic paint and again, shake. Make sure the paint covers the entire inside of the ornament. Pour out any extra. Let that sit over night to dry. After it is dry you may place the ornament hook back in the opening and it’s ready to hang!

How to make your own stockings!

You will need: 1 yard of black felt, ½ yard of white felt, white and red buttons, white and black embroidery thread or thin yarn, a sharpie pen, chalk, needles for embroidery.

Procedure: On your black fabric, take the chalk and sketch out a stocking shape. Make sure the opening is wide enough to put things in, say 8 to 10 inches. Fold the fabric over in half so that when you cut the stocking out, you only have to cut once for both sides. Using the sharpie on the white felt, draw something like a little teddy bear, a Christmas tree, or even a small little skull. Cut the shape out and using the black thread sew it to the front piece of the stocking. Using the red and black buttons, decorate the front even more. With the white thread and needle, sew the two black pieces together around the perimeter. Don’t worry about your hand sewing techniques; the sketchier the stitches look the cooler the stocking will look. Hang it and its ready to fill!!

From all of us here at Gothic Angst Webzine, have a happy and safe holiday season. Merry Christmas, Blessed Be, Happy Hanukkah, Opa!… or whatever you might say…

…And to all a goodnight!