7 Ways to Decorate For and Celebrate Creepmas

If you are anything like me, you want to prolong the spooky spirit of Halloween for as long as possible (perhaps even year-round!). During this holiday season, it is actually quite easy to do this by turning Christmas into Creepmas! That's right, the traditional time of holly-jolly cheer can be turned into yuletide fear by following a few simple tips from yours ghouly! You can still have your twinkling lights, your ornaments and tree, gingerbread cookies, etc., but with some extra tweaks you can bring back the Halloween frights! Think of the "Making Christmas" song from The Nightmare Before Christmas, where they add their own Halloweentown flair to traditional Christmas activities - if we think like that, we can have ourselves a scary little Christmas indeed!

I've posted seven ways to decorate for and celebrate Creepmas below, complete with photos of my own decorations this year to give you some ideas:

I have a small tree I decorate with purple and orange lights, black, orange, and

purple ornaments, plus lots of Halloween-themed ornaments like gravestones,

black cats, and bats! The bat topper is handmade out of black construction

paper.

1.) Decorate a Creepmas tree - The focal point of many holiday celebrations is the tree, but instead of a traditional one, how about having a Halloween tree? Or decorating a black tree? Or doing a zombie tree? The possibilities are endless, especially when you can re-use Halloween decorations and lights on your tree! Plus, they have all kinds of gothic/horror/Halloween ornaments you can buy now. Need inspiration? Check out my Creepmas tree above (and from past years HERE and HERE) and my other posts about Creepmas trees HERE and HERE!

Our Creepmas stockings (one for me, Mister Spooky, and our cat Havoc)!

2.) Read some spooky Christmas stories - Telling ghost stories around the fireplace was a Victorian Christmas tradition and I think we should bring back! Read some classic ghost stories set on or around Christmas - the first one that probably comes to mind is Dicken's A Christmas Carol, but there are others out there, too! This site has links to a few Victorian-era stories you can read online.

Close up of some of my ornaments on my Creepmas tree - ghost, black cat,

gravestones, and lots of black and orange!

3.) Use Halloween lights - There isn't any reason why you can't use orange or purple lights instead of white/red/green/blue lights this holiday season! In fact, I usually keep my indoor orange lights up well after Halloween.

Jolly jack-o-lanterns (and yes, I keep that skeleton and bats on the wall year-round)!

4.) Keep out your Halloween/horror figurines and dress them in Creepmas cheer - Add a Santa hat to your skeletons, horror figurines, etc.! See, now they are festive and ready for Krampus to come down the chimney! You could even add little Santa hats to any spooky artwork hanging on your walls to make it frightfully festive!

I like dressing up my skeleton pets in Santa hats to make them festive!

5.) Watch scary Christmas movies - There are more of these than you think! I made a list of 20 of my faves a few years ago (HERE and HERE - I'll be sharing a more current list soon!), plus another lets of snowbound horror movies perfect to watch around this time of year HERE.

A mini tree I decorate with a few glass ornaments.

6.) Make Gingerbread Haunted Houses and Bake Gingerdead Cookies - It's so easy to spookify these traditional Christmas baked goods! Check out inspiration HERE! 

Our skellie Frankie playing some Creepmas songs on our church organ.

7.) Make Jack Skellington's Spiderweb Snowflake - I posted about his a few years ago, but it is still a fun and easy way to make some spooky snowflakes! Link to instructions HERE!

My Creepmas tree this year!

What are your favorite ways to decorate for Creepmas? Do you incorporate any spooky Halloween elements into your holiday decor or celebrations?

Until next time, stay spooky!