Is decorating homes for Christmas a fading spirit?

A few decades ago, the festive season was ushered in by elaborate and much beloved rituals including renovations, big and small, for commercial and residential properties. The next step would be adding decorations to the newly facelifted properties.

A communal affair

To share the holiday spirit, communities came together to clean up their neighbourhoods and to crown it was the Christmas tree decorating. The cleanup began a week or two in advance with the clearing of pathways, sweeping of compounds and smearing house walls and floors with mud or dung.

Each family was responsible for clearing the walkways and pathways in the proximity of their homesteads and passed on the necessary tools to the neighbours to pick it up from there until the whole neighbourhood was clean.

The households would then mobilise banana stems and plant them on all village walkways as if to indeed welcome the king. This was traditionally referred to as the way of Jesus. If a homestead lacked stems, the neighbours generously shared theirs. 

Hedges were uniformly trimmed and the trees demarcating homestead boundaries were pruned. The pruning and trimming was usually done by young boys voluntarily moving from homestead to homestead for none or minimal compensation. Flowers were collected from the bushes and some neighbours who had flower gardens shared some. 

By December 25, all homes were sufficiently adorned with the season’s decor to celebrate the festive holiday. There was minimal expenditure and the exercise promoted communal spirit and bonding.

The beginning of the day

Sydney Katumba, who grew up in Masaka Town, now city says although there was similar excitement, the urbanites were less communal and each home took care of its decorating.

“If one did not get an artificial Christmas tree off the street or from a store, they would get the natural fir tree, and add decorations,” he says. 

This marked the shift when Christmas home decorating ceased being a communal to a private venture.  With time, fewer homes bothered to decorate for the holiday.

 Currently, many homeowners confess to have given up decorating their homes for the holidays, preferring to use the period for resting.  They attribute this change to the evolution of work. More people, including women who traditionally were the homekeepers that families counted on to decorate for the holiday, have embraced formal employment to keep pace with the increasing standards of living.

By the time many workplaces close down for the holiday, many people are too tired to engage in such a time-consuming activity. Some people do not get a break and work over the holiday period.

 “My parents seem to be busiest during the Christmas season. So we never get the opportunity to do Christmas décor as a family. My cousins do buy a tree and ornaments to decorate it, but they hastily do it themselves just to take some photos for their future memories not to create memories for me,” says 14-year-old Brian Ssaka.

Benefits of Christmas decorating

Psychologists state that decorating for the holidays well in advance creates a spike in dopamine and creates a neurological shift that can boost energy levels.

Decorating now is a great way to add something special outside of the daily routine as we head into the holidays.

Research also shows that people who decorate for Christmas early are perceived as friendly and approachable. A positive sign for business establishments looking for strategies to attract more clients. The Journal of Environmental Psychology found that homes with Christmas decorations had more significant attributes of sociability.

Christmas is an opportunity to put your home in order. It is a time to entertain guests, so the home gets a facelift to accommodate them.

Harriet Nabaasa has been hosting her children and grandchildren at her house for the past four Christmases. She likes to make adjustments to make her home look warm and comfortable for her guests.

“I want my children to find a different place when they come. I change up the curtains and beddings, repaint the house, buy new door mats and fine China sets for my kitchen. I also perform some minor repairs around the windows and toilets. If I had been procrastinating about replacing broken taps, Christmas time inspires me to call in my plumber,” she says.

Nabaasa says decorating for Christmas is not just about having bright ornaments hanging in one’s living room, but that it is also about keeping clean, as cleanliness dramatically modifies one’s home in a brilliant way. “It is almost as good as decorating or even better,” she shares.

Moreover, the annual clean up helps one get rid of clutter that will have gathered over the months.

“Getting rid of the clutter always helps me decompress and release stress,” adds Nabaasa, expressing the fulfillment she gets from decorating for Christmas.

Why is there decrease enthusiasm for festive home decor?

Limited resources

The enthusiasm to decorate homes has declined as has the capacity to enjoy the holiday.  Today, food, rather than décor is the first basic need and priority of a person with insufficient income. The cost of purchasing decor is much too high for families. Currently, the cheapest and smallest artificial Christmas tree in Kampala goes for a staggering Shs88,000. That, and the prices of additional decor discourage one from celebrating with a simple tree décor at their house.

Influx of artificial trees

Relying on natural decorations such as banana stems and wild flowers is no longer an option as more families take up residence in apartments and planned estates. Many of these new homes’ aesthetic would be at odds with the banana stem decor.  The Christmas trees are very rare to find around any urban household and in villages as concrete fences have taken over real estate. One has to be got from a distant rural area at a substantial cost.

Mark Cape, who used to enjoy family Christmas decorating experiences as a child, says he does not feel the same enthusiasm doing it now as an adult because the artificial trees and decorations do not give the same joy as the natural ones. 

“Every Christmas, our dad brought home a natural Christmas tree that was decorated with greeting cards from each of us and our favourite sweets. To the tree, we added Christmas lights that were lit on Christmas Eve. We would then sit around the tree singing carols and doing Bible quizzes.  Each right answer was rewarded with a sweet from the tree. These are now simply memories.  It feels different with the artificial trees and decorations,” says Cape.

Artificial trees however are popular because they are portable and reusable.

“We bought our first artificial Christmas tree about 10 years ago. We had decided to decorate that holiday because my brother was getting baptised.  We used the same tree for seven years until someone claimed it would give a similar effect as fireworks if we burnt,” says Ronnie Murungi. 

Restrictions

With more people living in rented homes, families are forced to forego this treasured experience because of tenancy rules and regulations. Many landlords prefer their properties kept as pristine as possible, which makes Christmas décor seem as clutter. 

Others are against decorating for practical reasons such as preservation of their properties. Rogers Nsereko sublets the external quarters of his home to students in the various universities in the city suburb of Kansanga. He feels some decorations damage the property.

  “I allow tenants to do simple decorations that do not involve drilling and hammering of walls,” he says.

Kaggwa Christopher, a civil engineer and father of a teenage daughter and toddler in Kansanga says the family hardly puts up decor in their home because of electricity consumption. Their landlord is also against balloons which he says cause unnecessary noise in the neighbourhood rowdy.

Shifting ideals

Different generations have varying values on how to spend the holiday and this influences their interest in decorating Christmas. To the older generation, the decor in the living room might have been an experience they cherished, but the younger generation prefers to book themselves in a hotel for a curated holiday. 

  A family that spent the holiday, cooking, singing and wearing matching Christmas pajamas at their house to observe Christmas now has many options to celebrate; they could travel and go for Christmas get-aways to unfamiliar and more exciting destinations. This will undermine the value of spending time decorating.

Profitable

Studies show that more people will walk into a store that has the decorations. More importantly, these customers tend to want to buy.

Although there are plenty of people who complain about how early the decorations go up, but their spending habits show they prefer them.