9 Ideas to Add the Christmas Spirit to Your Home

Christmas decorations provide the colors and vibe of Christmas for our homes, but I have 9 ideas to add the Christmas spirit to your home.

What is the Christmas spirit? It’s that intangible feeling that surrounds us this special time of year. No other holiday evokes a magical wonder like Christmas.

Need a few suggestions? Let me share my ideas to add the Christmas spirit to your home and make it the most wonderful time of the year.

These simple ideas are the things we can do to add that sense of Christmas. The sense of wonder, the feeling of anticipation, a cozy, warm feeling of family, friends, hope and joy.

It’s fun to remember projects, entertaining suggestions, and ideas that bring the Christmas season to mind. I hope you enjoy these suggestions.

Add the Christmas Spirit to Your Home: 9 Ideas

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Good news: these ideas to add the Christmas spirit to your home are simple and inexpensive.

Christmas Music

What’s my first idea is to add Christmas spirit to your home? Christmas music.

The day after Thanksgiving, Sweet Shark starts playing Christmas music. To me, nothing brings on the Christmas spirit like beautiful Christmas carols playing in the background.

We have collected Christmas CDs for over 25 years. In every genre, dozens of artists, both with lyrics and instrumental. Sweet Shark told me he thinks we have about 55 Christmas CDs.

I asked him to pick five of his favorites to share with you. He said it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever asked him to do. He kept changing his mind but finally decided on these five classics for holiday music.

• Elvis’ Christmas Album
• It Won’t Be Christmas Without You ~ Brooks and Dunn
• Pentatonix Christmas
• A Very Special Christmas, Volume 2 (This link is to Vol. 1 and Vol. 2)
• Vienna Noel ~ Placido Domingo, Sissel Kyrkjebo, Charles Aznavour

These Christmas tunes delight us every year. I can’t always remember the words by myself, but put them on the CD player and I know all the words.

What is your favorite Christmas carol?

Christmas Lights

Christmas lights, whether stars in the sky or our modern electric, have always been part of our Christmas spirit. Lights are such a beautiful addition to any Christmas vignette.

It always amazes me that people in earlier times put real candles on their Christmas trees.

They have become a part of our Christmas culture. Lights add such a festive spirit to the holidays that we can’t be without them.

We laugh together at Clark Griswald’s attempts to light up his home with a million lights.

Jokes about men untangling Christmas lights are part of our Christmas culture.

We drive around town looking at Christmas lights in our neighbors’ yards.

At our home, we can’t have enough Christmas lights.

Lights aren’t just for your Christmas tree.

We put them on our Christmas wreath, the banister, the mantel After years of discussion about white lights (me) versus colored lights (Sweet Shark), we came to the conclusion a few years ago that we can have both – now, that is the Christmas spirit.

Once we discovered battery-operated lights, our life changed.

Now we can put lights wherever we want them – Look, mom, no outlet required! Even better when lights with timers came on the market.

These days, as the lights come on magically as night falls, it really does seem like the Christmas spirit has entered our home.

This year we added more Christmas trees with more lights. I love this pretty pink and blue tray vignette.

See my ideas for Christmas trees and lights.

Christmas Candles

When you think that for centuries, candles and campfires were the only way that man had light, we modern folk have embraced candles for all the ambiance they bring.

Candles bring the holiday spirit throughout our Christmas decor with their cozy warmth and glow.

Christmas Fireplace

Who doesn’t love the glow of a roaring fireplace during Christmas time?

The blaze of the fireplace just evokes a sense of peace and home. Lighting the fireplace during the holidays is almost a rite of passage.

When my kids were little, they couldn’t come into the living room on Christmas morning to see their Christmas presents until the Christmas tree lights were turned on and the fireplace was lit. Then Christmas spirit was ready for opening presents.

Christmas Spirits and Scents

They say that smell is one of our most powerful senses.

Aromatic scents from candles and potpourri convey the Christmas spirit and thoughts of Christmases past.

You can make your own Christmas scent with some cinnamon sticks, oranges, and cranberries simmering on the stove. I recently found this wonderful recipe from 11 Magnolia Lane.

Christmas Blankets and Throws

Cuddling up on the sofa under a throw in front of that roaring fire with a cup of hot chocolate is one of my favorite ways to add the Christmas spirit to your home.

You can’t have too many blankets or throws in your home to keep Jack Frost away.

This year I made a new Christmas throw for our living room and displayed it on our ladder.

I used about 1 1/2 yards of flannel in a Christmas plaid and fringed the ends. It’s perfect for wrapping around your shoulders to keep the Baa Humbugs away.

This throw from last year stays on the sofa for afternoon naps or movie-watching.

One year this chunky blanket from Home Goods was on our bedfor extra color and to keep our toes warm. This year I moved into it onto the ladder.

The Christmas spirit is all about warmth and cozy and that’s what blankets and throws provide.

This favorite Christmas pillow brings a fun and vintage Christmas spirit to our home.

How about our candy cane sheets? We can dream of sugar-plum fairies.

Oops. I just realized that one pillow is upside down.

Here’s our master bedroom decked out for Christmas last year.

Christmas Movies

There are hundreds of Christmas movies, some old, some new. Some classic, funny or silly, some dramatic. The Hallmark Channel has made a business of Christmas movies.

Watching a Christmas movie with family is a time-honored tradition. (Make sure the fireplace is lit, you have a cozy blanket and plenty of popcorn.)

Watching Christmas movies is a great way to spend holiday time together as a family.

We tend to like the older ones to bring in the Christmas spirit.

• National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation – yes, I know it’s silly and slapstick, but it’s a classic. Every year we record it.
• It’s a Wonderful Life – Who doesn’t think that Clarence got his wings? When we hang our silver bells on the tree, I always think of that movie.
• Miracle on 34th Street ~ Who doesn’t believe that Edmund Gwenn is really Santa Claus?
• The Polar Express ~ after reading this story to my kids for years, the movie didn’t disappoint. I cried.
• The Holiday ~ a wonderfully romantic movie. If I cry, then Cameron Diaz has to.
• Home Alone ~ next to Christmas Vacation, the funniest Christmas movie ever made. Who doesn’t wish that Macauley Culkin could have stayed young forever?

This year we’ve already watched Christmas at the Greenbrier and Dolly Parton’s Magic Mountain Christmas. They will make you want to spend Christmas at these places someday.

Christmas Sweets

Why do we especially love sweets at Christmas? Is the Christmas spirit trying to make us fat? HAHA!

Christmas cookie exchanges bring friends together. Christmas fudge, Christmas brownies, Christmas cakes (Buche Noel, anyone?) – they all make us feel festive and joyful.

During the holidays, two sweets are always easily accessible. Red and green M & M’s and Christmas kisses are the sweets that we crave. Christmas spirit, come on in!

I love making Christmas desserts during the holidays, like cherry cheesecake tartlets and the best brownies with chocolate and raspberries.

Traditions of the Christmas Spirit

The Christmas spirit is all about memories and family and tradition.

Whether you have your grandmother’s Christmas china, your father’s favorite Christmas ornaments or the ornaments you saved from early marriage, bringing those things out at Christmas us truly in the spirit of Christmas.

However many decorations, trees, vignettes, lights or candles you have to bring in the Christmas spirit, I think there should be at least one thing that is a special tradition in our homes.

My Aunt Mildred was a fabulous knitter. Every Christmas she would knit my brother and me Christmas sweaters. I’d give anything to have just one of those today.

I remember the train that my dad would put up around the tree each year. All memories, all traditions, all part of the Christmas spirit.

For years, I have collected silver Christmas bells. Several years, I started giving one to our daughters for Christmas. Except for having to polish them, they are one of my most cherished Christmas traditions.

Every year for Christmas, the kids received a Christmas ornament. Several years ago, I boxed them up and gave each one their ornaments to start their own collection. Now I give the grandkids a yearly ornament. This year their ornaments were from our Alaska cruise with the family.

Sweet Shark and I have one thing that has come out every year for the past 22 years. In July 2000, we were on a 2-week bus tour through Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. The highlight was the Passion Play in Oberammergau, Germany.

While there, we found a shop that made nativities.

We thought that they were beautiful, each character hand-carved and hand-painted.

We ordered one and it arrived just before Thanksgiving.

Each year, we put out the nativity scene. Our holiday decorations aren’t complete without this special tradition. Nothing evokes the spirit of Christmas more than finding this beautiful recreation of Christ’s birth in a little town in Germany.

NOTE: The Passion Play in Oberammergau was postponed due to Covid, but returned in 2022. The next one is in 2030.

Well, that’s my 9 ideas to add the Christmas spirit to your home.

I hope these ideas gave you inspiration or made you think of your own ways to bring out the spirit of Christmas this year or in the coming years. They certainly help to create Christmas memories. Remember: it’s the little things that count.

• How to Make a Christmas Sign
• Christmas Gifts You can Make
• How to Make a DIY Christmas Cutting Board
• How to Have a Hot Chocolate Bar Part

I wish you Christmas cheer and the merriest of Christmases.

These ideas are my little gift to you. Will you give me back a little Christmas spirit and PIN these ideas?