From House To Home

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One December when I was about 9, my mother announced that the Christmas tree would have a green-and-white color scheme so as not to clash with her newly interior-designer-decorated living room.

My sisters and I were appalled. Did we care a tuppence for the trappings of 1970s chic? Christmas was for color—every color under the Advent sun—and the more of it the better. The scheme was an abomination, a poke in Rudolph’s eye, and, decorous or not, an assault on decorum. What was next? Monochromatic wrapping paper? Tidy envelopes of cash stuffed into our stockings?

Adult visions of a beautiful Christmas don’t always mesh with childhood ideas of the same. That’s why it’s nice to let kids decorate their own inner sanctums, replete with all the jingle and jangle that say “merry” in the child’s visual lexicon.

If I were still a kid, I’d want my room to be a riot of red, green, and gold. Among the yuletide appointments I’d want would be a bureau festooned with cottony snow into which I’d liberally sprinkled glitter and sequins, bed linens with Christmas trees or Santas, at least one snowman stuffed toy, a sled filled with shiny Christmas balls or bibelots, and colored lights—preferably the old-fashioned, pear-shaped bulbs about the size of a disfigured walnut.

But that’s just me.

The idea of breaching the prescribed palette of red, green, and white would have been as welcome to me as actually eating mincemeat. However, the eyes of some tots may be more sophisticated when it comes to envisioning winning tableaux. The holidays can be pretty in frosty pink, for example, as the little girl’s room shown here attests.

Shopping for kid-friendly bedroom decor needn’t be costly. Kid-decorated felt envelopes can be pinned around throw pillows, for instance. Stocking shapes can be cut from felt and adorned with glitter and sequins. Children can cut stars from felt or construction paper or aluminum foil and hang them from the ceiling or use the same material to cut out letters and strew them into banners that express their own holiday sentiments. “Welcome, Santa. Did you get my letter?” is just the first that comes to mind.