This season calls for a tartan bow the size of a dinner plate, traditional baubles on the tree and a host of wooden nutcracker soldiers. ‘Ralph Lauren Christmas’ has gone viral, and gen Z has fallen hard for nostalgia and the 1990s
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t is December, which everyone knows is the time to get your Christmas on. So what is it to be this year? An ironic wreath made from brussel sprouts? Oh-so-zeitgeist decorations in the shape of Perelló olive tins or Torres crisp packets? Or are we thinking a minimalist all-white theme?
Wrong, wrong and wrong again. My front door wreath – it went up two weeks ago because I’m a Christmas superfan – is huge and trad, with a tartan bow the size of a dinner plate. There are wooden nutcracker soldiers the size of toddlers by the fireplace. When I put my tree up this weekend, it may well collapse under the weight of old-fashioned round baubles.
There has been a Christmas vibe shift: let’s call it Ho-Ho-Home Alone. After all, the first family of 2025’s holiday season are Kevin and the McCallisters, from the festive movie that is on everyone’s guilty pleasure list. Laura Jackson, co-founder of the homeware marketplace Glassette and east London’s premier tastemaker, had a pre-Christmas family sleepover at a London hotel and posted that “the kids all in their dressing gowns running down the halls felt very Home Alone”. The poster for Oh. What. Fun, Michelle Pfeiffer’s new streaming-for-Christmas film, shows Pfeiffer in festive knitwear in front of a very McCallister-coded gingerbread-style suburban American mansion. The look is everywhere: we’re talking tartan pyjamas, Santa hats, stockings lined up over roaring fires. Marks & Spencer reports that candy-cane striped baubles and six packs of tinsel rosettes have been Christmas bestsellers. The vibe is cosy, but also unashamedly jolly. Forget everything you have learned about oatmeal-toned hygge chic; bring Will Ferrell in Elf levels of enthusiasm to your decorating. Let me put it this way: if you can still see your stairs, you need to drape more cedar branches around them.
