What your Christmas garden decorations say about you

Is it lighting-up time in your neighbourhood yet? Ours starts promptly on December 1st. Suddenly houses that look quite sober the rest of the year are dripping with flashing lights. It's Christma-a-a-s!

Actually, I like it. There seem to be more wreaths around than there used to be, too. And if you're tempted to get creative, Michelle over at Vegplotting has some useful wreath-making tips.

In the meantime, while I'm ferreting through the cupboards to find long-lost strings of solar-powered lights (not sure I'll actually put them outside - bit sad to find one's own decorations fading into darkness for lack of energy, while everyone else's are powering away), I'm pondering this American research on the impact of Christmas decorations, published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology.

The premise was that strangers to an area would be able to identify friendly residents by the exterior of their houses. These strangers looked at photographs of houses where the residents had rated themselves on their level of social contact with neighbours (low or high). Sure enough, residents who'd decorated their houses for Christmas were rated as being more friendly and sociable.  Even without Christmas decorations, the strangers spotted the difference between houses belonging to sociable residents by noticing the more 'open' and 'lived in' look of the homes.

Here's the twist, though. Where residents had put up Christmas decorations but had rated themselves as having low social contact, they were perceived by the strangers as being more sociable and involved in the neighbourhood than they were.

What does that mean? Well, if you feel you'd like to know your neighbours better, or if you've just moved in and don't know anyone yet, it looks as if putting up some garden decorations sends out the message that you're really quite a decent chap. Indeed, the research states that its results support the idea that residents can use their home's exterior to communicate attachment and possibly to integrate themselves into social activities. 

Perhaps I'll put those lights up, after all!

You might also enjoy: Five Tips for Decorating the Outdoors  and my review of solar-powered lights.