19 December 2010

Dickensian

Goths love Victoriana, and a lot of modern day Christmas decorations are influenced from that time period. I thinks we could all do with returning to some Victorian values during this time of the year! After all, in some ways, Christmas is the perfect Goth holiday (apart from Halloween of course!). We’re all about decadence and the finer things in life, and what do we have at Christmas? Finer and rich foods, spirits (both spooky and alcoholic), luxurious fabrics and clothes, spicy scents. During the Victorian era they considered Christmas Eve to be the ideal time of year to tell ghost stories!

Indulge the decadent dandy Goth in you - lavish your home with warm spicy aromas and snugly blankets. Beautiful leafy or feathered wreaths and garlands in dark greens and ruby reds as well as candle-light will give your home a wonderful luxurious glow to shelter in from the winter cold. (If you’re not keen on real flames, flameless candles are also widely available).

Handmade Christmas
We Goths are a resourceful lot, and where things cannot be obtained cheaply, or not at all, we often resort to making our own. Perhaps you've seen a decoration that's really quite lovely, but not quite the right colour? Well, why not buy it anyway and paint it black?

You can obtain all the materials you may require from most craft stores. The tinsel is wrong, the garlands are too bright, and that wreath really would look better if it were jet black - well equip yourself with a can of spray paint and within seconds, you can have yourself all the black tinsel and wreaths you could ever desire to darken your Christmas grotto. If the black is a little full on, add a splash of colour - silver for frost, drops of red paint for holly berries, or perhaps a red velvet ribbon on your raven-black garland. If you covet the Tim Burton stripy suggestion, you could buy white baubles and paint vertical black stripes all over.

Craft stores will normally stock season themed craft kits - you could craft your own wreaths with fake Christmas roses and ivy, twined with black ribbons. Although it may require a little more elbow grease, the best part of the handmade Christmas is…anything goes!

Cute and Quirky
There are a range of Gothic accessories out there for Christmas. It’s always worth having a peek through the seasonal and gift sections of websites that cater to Goths and alternative fashions, as sometimes they sell things such as gothic Christmas cards and wrapping paper. It should be noted that these tend to be more expensive than your regular cards and gift wrap, but if skull-patterned gift wrap is just the thing you need to complete the look of your Gothic Christmas, why the heck not?

While I've had a little trouble finding cutesy things this year on the regular gothy fashion sites, after trawling through the search engines I found some lovely decorations: skulls to sit atop the tree in place of a traditional star or angel and faeries to hang off the branches in place of baubles (including some designs from Jasmine Becket-Griffith’s 'Strangeling' series).

I also found black stockings and icicles, and even little dragons! Christmas dragons! Dragons to hang as baubles from the trees and even dragon wreaths - perfect for Goths of the Pagan persuasion who may well be celebrating Yule. These decorations may be a tad more expensive than the bog standard supermarket decks that everyone else is opting for, but if Gothic faeries and dragons are among your favourite things, then perhaps they’ll be perfect for your home this Christmas!

And for your alternative Christmas soundtrack...'Gothic Christmas', by Within Temptation'You’re a Mean One, Mr Grinch' cover by The Offspring'Walking in the Air' cover by NightwishAnd just released; 'X-M@$' by Corey Taylor - there’s a campaign to try and get this song to be Christmas No 1 too!Also check out our review of the 'Christmas Ghouls' album by SPECTRA*paris