Display

Here’s a thought nobody says out loud: the tree is the worst place to display ornaments. Half of them end up facing the wall, the back of the tree is a black hole, and in a small apartment the tree eats the room. Ornaments deserve better — and so does your floor space. Whether you’re skipping the tree entirely or you just have more ornaments than branches, these ten display ideas put every ornament where it can actually be seen. All of them work in small apartments, all of them are renter-safe, and none of them require a tree. ...

Christmas villages are the most quietly obsessive corner of holiday decorating. Nobody starts out as a “village person.” You buy one little lit house because it’s charming. Then a church. Then a lamppost. Then, three Decembers later, you’re rearranging furniture to accommodate a miniature town and explaining to guests why the bakery has to face east. The houses are easy; the display is hard. These ten ideas cover the best spots in the house, lighting for actual magic, and January packing without crushing a single rooftop. ...