Jacquie Severs

In a previous job, everyday when I arrived to work it was Christmas. Literally the showroom always had a Christmas section, there was no 'off season'. During that phase, I purchased a lot of cheap ornaments and baubles for decorating the house.

This year, due to some personal shifts and generalized busy-ness, I'm not doing a full-sized Christmas tree. That means my collection of red, white and silver do-dads is staying in the storage unit and I'm only "putting up" my mini Barbie themed tree. It's about 2 feet tall and is decorated with mini disco balls and vintage Barbie doll ornaments. Each year Hallmark releases two different collectible ornaments, the yearly release, which is usually in a horridly large and gross princess dress, and then a historically popular Barbie from the archives.

It's those ones I love best. My mom usually buys me one on Boxing day for half price, that's how I started collecting them! I've got a great series of them and it's almost as much fun unpacking them and putting them on my mini tree as it was playing with Barbies as a kid.

As an aside, I'll mention that I think Barbie has really started sucking lately. Why must all new Barbie toys be pink? Why doesn't she get to wear other colours? As demonstrated by the image at right, this was not always the case. I'm irritated this year by girls toys and how pink they all are, as if little girls shouldn't be allowed to even touch anything navy blue. Don't even get me started on the Disney Princesses! That's another blog post...

This post is about the pink Barbie tree being the centrepiece of my holiday decor this year, and how it's gotten me to thinking about different holiday colour schemes.

The traditional colours of green and red have a long history, and though many theories about why they are the Christmas colours are out there, it's likely because of the use of "Paradise Trees" used in Miracle Plays which were popular in the 15th Century. The plays were used to tell the story of Adam and Eve, and the trees were often pine trees decorated with apples. Evergreens were used because they could be sourced year 'round and kept their lustrous green colour.

image source

Non-traditional colour palettes are so pretty though! Using non-traditional colours isn't really new either, as evidenced by those lovely vintage glass ornaments finding themselves desirable again.

To me the best way to do a non-traditional holiday theme is to include one traditional colour and then go wild from there. Designers use this rule as well, because the traditional colours always sell better than the wild ones at retail. For this reason, collections have a 'safe' base colour and this helps them sell the more wild, contemporary looks.

Use Silver, Gold, Red or Green or White and then have some fun. In my case, I'm using pink and silver!

The hottest trend in decor, fashion and jewellery is definitely still Peacock. A holiday peacock theme uses green, and in this image also uses gold and silver.