The Halloween Christmas Tree: Keeping the Spooky Up Through December
Searches for a Halloween Christmas tree have roughly quadrupled over the past three months, which tells you two things. A lot of people put up a tree in October now, and a lot of them are wondering what to do with it in December. The lazy answer is to leave it. The better answer is to convert it, because a tree that still says Happy Halloween on the 20th of December looks less like commitment and more like nobody got round to it.
The good news is that the conversion is mostly subtraction. Most of what makes a tree read as October is colour, and most of the colour is orange.
Why it works at all
The motifs that dominate Halloween decorating, the black cat, the raven, the moon, the skull, are not seasonal in any real sense. They are night motifs, and they belong to the dark half of the year, which runs from the end of October to the spring equinox. Our piece on living through the dark half of the year goes into this; the short version is that a cat under a crescent moon is as much at home at midwinter as it is at Samhain. What changes is the framing around it.
The colour rule
Night-motif ornaments that stay up
This is the whole trick, so it goes first.
Remove the orange
Every orange bauble, every pumpkin, every strand of orange lights. Orange is the single colour that reads as October and nothing else. Once it is gone, black, purple, green and gold all become winter colours.
Add one warm metal
Gold or copper. A few metallic pieces spaced through the tree shift the whole thing from spooky to festive. They also catch light better than anything you had up in October.
Add evergreen
Fir, holly, eucalyptus, real or convincing. Tuck sprigs into the branches and along the base. This is the second half of the conversion and it is non-negotiable.
Ornaments: keep, swap, retire
Go through the tree in three passes.
Keep
Black cats, ravens and crows, moons in any phase, owls, skulls in ceramic or glass, witch silhouettes, anything celestial. The black cat ornaments and owl ornaments were designed to work across both seasons, most of them with a moon or a winter sky behind the animal so they read as night rather than as Halloween.
Swap
Replace pumpkin ornaments with antler or horned god pieces. Replace cauldrons with moon phase discs. Replace anything with a spider on it with a pentacle or a triple moon. The Yule ornament collection has direct equivalents for most of these, and the gothic ornaments cover the darker end.
Retire
Plastic bats, paper garlands, cobweb, anything glow-in-the-dark, anything with text. Ghosts are borderline; a cream glass ghost can pass as a winter spirit, a cartoon one cannot.
The base
If the tree stood on a Halloween skirt or, worse, a black bin bag, this is the moment to fix it. A dark Yule skirt with one motif, whether a black cat, a raven or a pentacle, lets the tree sit in a finished way. The tree skirts include several that were plainly made with a converted Halloween tree in mind.
Lights
Purple and orange strings go. Warm white stays or goes in. If you want colour, a single deep purple string against black branches with gold ornaments looks like a decision. Purple and green together looks like a Halloween aisle.
Depth
A Halloween tree is usually lit from the outside, because the aim in October is silhouette. A winter tree wants depth. Wind at least one string close to the trunk so the inside of the tree glows, then run a second along the branch tips. The difference is obvious the moment the room lights go off.
Two trees, one box of ornaments
If you are doing this every year, it is worth sorting the ornaments into three groups when they come down in January: October only, December only, and both. The both box is the one that grows. Over a few seasons you will find you own a set of night-motif ornaments that go up in early October and come down at Twelfth Night, and two small boxes of seasonal extras that swap over in November. That is the whole system, and it is cheaper than buying a second tree.
Storage note
Glazed ceramic and glass survive a long stint on the tree better than painted plastic, and they store well wrapped in the tissue they came in. Anything that has spent three months hanging near a radiator should be checked for hooks that have loosened.
Around the tree
A converted tree in a room that is still full of October will not look converted. Clear the pumpkins from the mantel, swap the orange candles for ivory or black, and hang stockings. Stockings are the most efficient winter signal there is; three witchy stockings on a mantel with a black cat tree beside them says December instantly. Our gothic Christmas decor guide covers the rest of the room.
If you want it to mean something
The dark tree is not only an aesthetic. Evergreen brought indoors at midwinter is one of the oldest habits in northern Europe, older than the holiday it now belongs to, and the animals of the night were part of the same seasonal story. The winter solstice traditions piece covers what people were actually marking, and the black cat symbolism guide explains why the cat earned its place on the tree in the first place.
A timeline that works
1 November
Orange out, pumpkins boxed, lights checked.
Mid November
Evergreen in, gold pieces in, skirt swapped. The tree is now a winter tree with a dark character.
Early December
Stockings up, mantel converted, any final ornament swaps. Done.
Twelfth Night
Everything down, ornaments sorted into the two boxes they will come out of next year.
One ornament that carries both seasons
Frequently Asked Questions About Halloween Christmas Trees
Can I leave my Halloween tree up for Christmas?
Yes, and many people do. Remove the orange, add evergreen and one warm metal, swap pumpkin and cauldron ornaments for antler, moon and pentacle pieces, and change the skirt. The tree becomes a winter tree with a dark character rather than a Halloween tree that overstayed.
Which Halloween ornaments work at Christmas?
Black cats, ravens, owls, moons, skulls in ceramic or glass, witch silhouettes and anything celestial. These are night motifs rather than October motifs and sit comfortably on a midwinter tree.
What colour lights should a dark tree have in December?
Warm white, or a single colour such as deep purple. Avoid orange strings and avoid mixing purple with green, which reads as Halloween.
Do I need a new tree skirt?
If the current one is orange, has pumpkins on it, or is a bin bag, yes. A dark skirt with one motif in gold, cream or green finishes the tree and makes the conversion look intentional.
The Halloween tree and the Yule tree were never really two different trees. They are the same dark branches with the orange taken off and the evergreen put on, and the animals of the night were always going to be there for both.
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