Bored Panda reached out to the UK-based team over at The Christmas Shop and spoke to them about Xmas decorations. According to Thompson, great decorations fall into 2 categories: "Those that are stylishly designed and fit in with a theme or color scheme and those that provoke happy memories of family and friends or past events."

Thompson said: "To some extent, Christmas decorations will always be tacky in the minds of some people due to their bright sparkly colors and for the enthusiast, there can never be 'too much.'"

We were also curious to find out how the hardships of 2020 affected The Christmas Shop on a very practical level. "The final quarter of 2020 has been very successful with sales considerably higher than previous years," Thompson revealed. "The closure of retail stores during lockdown and the subsequent restrictions on retail has pushed people to purchase online and we appear to have benefitted from this."

I can tell you that I personally felt loads better after I got my Christmas tree and put up all of the decorations. It’s not just me, though. Psychologist Deborah Serani explained to ‘Today’ that all of the bright lights and colors boost our mood and spike our dopamine. In brief, the pretty lights make us happy. And we wouldn’t have it any other way. 

However, when it comes to decorating your home, office, or front yard, creativity can be a bit of a double-edged candy cane sword because it’s not just you that you have to impress. You want something refined and elegant yet fun and goofy that will have the neighbors talking. But finding the balance between the two can be a Grinch-filled nightmare.

Obviously, we all want to impress Santa so much that it’ll make him leave us cookies and milk (and make him put us on the ‘nice’ list. Permanently). But it’s a fine line between Xmas spirit-inspired genius ideas and tacky decorations that are way too out there for anyone to enjoy.

The solution—get as many people’s opinions about your decorations as you can. Ask your family to be honest with you. FaceTime your friends. Get your colleagues on Zoom. Heck, you could even try asking for advice on the internet, of all things!

Whatever decorations you’ve already put up (or are rushing to unbox), at the end of the day, what really matters is that you have fun. Even if it’s tacky—it’s still Christmassy. And even if your creativity’s raising too many eyebrows, we’ve got to give you props for trying! Remember, there’s always next year. You can one-up yourself then!