The popular vision of the winter holidays is a frosty swirl of white snowflakes falling on bright decorations, but what if you never get to see snow? For Jacksonville residents, who live in almost year-round summery weather, sunny days are a fact of life. If you’ve moved to Florida from a northern state, or if you’re longing to decorate your home like a holiday greeting card, some types of traditional holiday decorations may not feel like they fit the mood here in Florida. But with some creativity and the right viewpoint, warm-weather lights and decorations can have all the charm of a wintry scene… and you still won’t have to shovel the sidewalk!

Give a Wintry Feel

It may not feel like winter outside, but if you take a tip from Walt Disney World, you can decorate your environment to look like the coldest holiday. Disney World is famous for decorating for winter holidays when it’s 80 degrees outside, and tourists respond by getting into the holiday feeling.

The secret is to go over the top with your holiday decorations. Cover your bushes with an overabundance of multicolored lights. Hang twinkling icicle lights from the edge of the roof. Festoon the front door with a large wreath and swaths of pine garland, be it real or artificial. Add a creatively decorated tree in the middle of the yard. For that extra wintry feeling, make piles of instant snow and sprinkle them around the entire yard. This way, you aren’t trying to shut your eyes and pretend it’s cold out; you’re embracing the holiday with the all-out fun of a theme park.

Embrace the Warmth

If you left the frozen north to get away from snow and ice, you may not have fond memories of wintry holidays. You can still do some fun decorating in December. Instead of wintry holiday decor, transform that feeling into a celebration of tropical warmth and fun, and emphasize your environment with your holiday decorations.

Avoid the traditional red and green lights, and substitute hot neon LED strings in green, purple, and pink. Wrap strings of lights around the trunk of your palm tree, and festoon lights in the fronds. Make a wreath with white fronds and decorate it with neon balls to hang on your front door. If you’ve got a patio set in front, drape strings of bright lights over the umbrella and around the base of the table. Install solar lights around the edges of your planting and add neon lens covers to give the plants a colored glow. The idea is not to imitate a cold and wintry landscape, but to reinterpret the holiday in a warm, tropical way.

It might be a struggle to figure out how to celebrate this cold-weather holiday while you’re basking in the Florida sun, but you can still find ways to be festive without pretending there’s a chill in the air and snow on the ground. Get into the spirit in your own way, and you’re sure to have a merry holiday after all.

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