How To Make Your Christmas Tree Cool Like You

Trimming the tree with personality and wit is having a moment. In 2022, decking the halls is a choose-your-own-adventure event. You could pick up a couple of boxes of balls and tinsel at Target and call it a day, but curating an ornament collection that expresses you is the new way to make the season bright, and anyone can find baubles that run the gamut from trad to rad to suit their taste.

In fact, one could argue that we’re living in a golden age of holiday decorations that rivals Victorian England or mid-century America. But how did this ornamental wave come about?

Ten years ago, New York retailer John Derian was in Paris when the team from the elegant porcelain company Astier de Villatte persuaded him to hop on a flight to attend the Christmasworld show in Frankfurt, Germany. Derian, who sets interior trends via his New York shops and wholesale business, was instantly charmed when he saw the fair’s array of quirky ornaments. What started as a “smattering” of styles led to an annual installation of overloaded trees — Derian ordered 1,700 individual ornaments this year alone. Shoppers can also find a healthy selection he started offering online during the pandemic.

“I was amusing myself and sharing the beauty and humor with everyone,” Derian says of his ornamental attraction. “For a couple of years, I was like, ‘This is dumb. Am I shooting myself in the foot?’ But I kept liking them and kept doing it, and it just kind of grew. Ten years ago, I didn’t have 75 different kinds of mushrooms, nor did we have aliens and spaceships and dinosaurs. People keep thinking of the funniest, most creative things.”

When you start searching for fun styles, one name comes up over and over — Cody Foster. The Nebraska native founded his eponymous line in his grandmother’s basement in 1999. Since then, his holiday décor has grown to dominate the market with amusing, whimsical designs, evolving over the years to include everything from a dumpster fire and a syringe of Botox to a plethora of pop culture icons and popular foods. For 2022, he has introduced roughly 1,200 new ornaments to the line.

Foster, who's as busy as Santa’s elves (and therefore impossible to get on the phone), is nearly dominating the market. According to The New York Times, his top-selling stick of butter has sold 110,000 units in the last three years alone.

If you have a favorite celebrity, a favorite snack, even a favorite meme, Foster has likely turned it into something you can hang from a tree. This year’s top styles? Along with the butter, there's Betty White and the recently departed Queen Elizabeth II. This year, the characters Kevin McCallister from Home Alone and Stefan of Saturday Night Live fame joined the likes of Taylor Swift and Post Malone in the designer’s popular “icon” line (found locally at Mecox and Holiday Warehouse in Plano).

Another pop culture ornament notable is artist Matthew Lineham, who seven years ago began using rubber to make ornaments based on his favorite musicians. His “Very New Wave Christmas” was launched with the likes of “Siouxsie Lou Who” and “David Snowie,” and he’s added to the assortment every year with styles based on the Cramps, Grace Jones, Kraftwerk, the B-52s and the Ramones, to name a few. Lineham says he and his wife think of the puns that inspire the ornaments all year. The brainstorming session this year led to a sold-out array of alternative stars, including “Pine Inch Nails” and the “Chocteau Twins.”

“I honestly didn’t think much of it the first year,” says Lineham, who sells the assortment online and at pop-up art shows. “I just wanted to have fun making something purposely corny that would make people smile. [But] I think it’s important to express your personality any way that makes you happy. If putting silly ornaments on your tree helps you smile, that’s great!”

If you like to trim the tree with something no one else has, it’s easy to lean into Etsy. A simple search for Italian, German or Russian ornaments will turn up some eye-popping styles. Instagram is another source of endless inspo, as small folk-art retailers often sell decorations you can’t find anywhere else. Retailer Hayward Simoneaux of the boutique Eight Million Gods in New Mexico may carry Foster’s Grace Jones ornament, but he also sources strange blown-glass styles by a Pennsylvania artist of Krampus, Divine and David Lynch, as well as quirky stuffed Tupac ornaments from Kyrgyzstan tattooed with “Thug Laff” instead of “Thug Life.”
“I’m just drawn to different; I’ve just always been that way,” he says of the assortment he sources from all over the world. “The normal doesn’t interest me. It’s all a little dark and creepy, and some of it is pop culture, strange or sometimes a memory. I like to kind of mix different materials, so they’re not all glass or papier mache or felt, and I like to have some from different countries mixed in.”

Interior designer-turned-retailer Rebecca Gardner of Houses & Parties added ornaments to her selection of elegant tablescapes as a year-round gifting solution. Her blown-glass styles from the likes of the Italian firm De Carlini are tagged with sayings that give them something extra. For example, a pig adorned with “Rooting for You” or a shrimp accented with a tag that says “Shrimply the Best.”

The Corpus Christi native comes by her ornament obsession organically.

“I had a godmother from Houston who would sort her ornament collection by bunnies for Easter, green balls for Saint Patrick’s Day, and red hearts for Valentine’s," Gardner says. "I thought, ‘Why can’t you make ornaments you give all year-round? They’re so pretty tied on a gift.”

Gardner believes that how you decorate your tree is just as important as what you ultimately buy.

“I don’t think there’s anything sadder than a themed Christmas tree," she says "It has no tradition, no charm. Your Christmas tree doesn’t need to match your décor; it is its own entity. I prefer one fabulous tree that’s absolutely loaded with an embarrassment of ornaments. I would encourage people to think of their Christmas tree as a little installation of your life and let it be heartfelt, and tender and imperfect.”

For one local collector, one tree is not enough. Dallas-based fashion executive Kevin Korney started collecting in earnest in the late ‘90s when he was a New York-based director of men’s merchandising for Ralph Lauren.

Today, he has four trees with varying themes: one devoted to the ocean, a Mexican-themed tree as a nod to his husband’s heritage, a traditional Americana tree and an ever-evolving, travel-themed tree.

Korney says he initially shopped for styles during his globetrotting for various brands, but lucked out.

“There weren’t a lot of ornaments to be found," he says. "I would end up buying a keychain and turning it into an ornament, and I started to get a lot of miscellaneous weirdness. [Eventually] I decided to shift to all-glass, and that started the excitement and inspiration.”
With each year’s travels, Korney searches out styles that remind him of a place and time, such as a charcuterie board for Italy or a mummy to remind him of this year’s trip to Egypt. He also does an ornament exchange with his coworkers at various jobs to remind them of the year gone by.

“I’ve been gifting ornaments to my teams for over 20 years. [When I worked] at Vera Bradley, there was always a fun critter in the patterns, like a ladybug or sunflower, so people would get three to four ornaments each year from me with a note. When I put my tree up, there are so many memories going back to my time [working] at Converse or Disney, and it’s a great time when I hear from friends that are putting up their tree.”

Whatever your feelings about leaning into expressive ornaments, the trend isn’t going away anytime soon.

“I don’t think it’s going to go back,” says Derian. “I feel you’ve got a whole new audience, and they like this variety. It’s interesting to see what people do. I think even though they’re kind of funny and whimsical and quirky — and maybe borderline tacky — they’re’ still shiny and attractive. There’s something about them in general that speaks to you.”

So, if you're ready to start a new tradition of turning your holiday décor into an accurate representation of your personality, here are a few fun themes to get you started:

Pop Culture Vulture
Take a page from ornament collector Kevin Korney and pick up a trinket that reminds you of the year, like 2020’s Tiger King ornament, or indulge yourself with ornaments representing your passions — film, food, sports or music stars. Bishop Arts in Oak Cliff has several gift shops with original ornaments, and Neiman Marcus has ornaments such as the internet-famous sign for Austin restaurant El Arroyo.

Retro Holiday
If you long for the glory days of going to Grandma’s house, the Retro Chrismas Shop offers all the elves, reindeer, Santas and snowmen your heart could desire. Once widespread in the ‘40s and ‘50s, classic Shiny Brite baubles and balls were reissued in 2001 to deliver those mid-century vibes to any tree.

A Curated Collection
There’s no reason to limit your portfolio of artwork to walls or tabletop. Known for her soft-sculpture McDonald’s installation at Art Basel, artist Lucy Sparrow offers hilarious fast-food treats for your tree on her Sew Your Soul site. Or opt for some fun and colorful artist ornaments from Cody Foster — the brand makes glass effigies of Dali, Warhol, Frida Kahlo and Yayoi Kusama, to name a few.
Creepy Little Christmas
Halloween trees are a thing, and opting for an all-black or metallic tree can take you through spooky season right into Christmas. Middle of Beyond makes fun glass ornaments inspired by horror classics such as Creepshow, Evil Dead and The Twilight Zone. Grapevine shop Good Things For All Seasons has holiday décor inspired by Elvira and Nightmare Before Christmas (plus Christmas fairies and Santas). Ornament specialist John Derian carries a mix of mildly unsettling designs. If you want to keep things Christmas-y, you can’t go wrong with a Krampus collection. Santa’s half-goat, half-demon BFF adds just the right creepiness to a classic collection.