Santa’s helpers who love to decorate their homes

Lighting the way for Santa’s sleigh to come their way, more and more houses are being lit up and decorated for this Christmas season.

Imagine this, the weather is quickly changing and summer is coming to an end. While some people dread the fact that winter is fast approaching, Alfred Tanti on the other hand quickly starts planning how he’ll be decorating his house for Christmas.

Husband and father, Alfred often spends time on his front porch, thinking and picturing what decorations he could add to his eccentric collection of decorations.

“We’ve been decorating ever since we got married, but every year, the decorations increase and change, and we’ve had more each year,” his wife Rosalie told MaltaToday. “This is the first year we went all out, we’ve never had so many decorations before.”

Their decorations were up a month before Christmas, and stay up until the Italian Epiphany feast, on 6 January.

Although the decorations come up in November, Alfred starts planning his decorations around September, and buys decorations all year round. When the time comes, the whole family joins in, but Alfred is always the mastermind behind the designs.

(Photo: James Bianchi/MediaToday)

“Sometimes, we just help him out when he needs us, because he usually has a very clear idea of what he wants to do.”

Christmas is the family’s favourite holiday, and while outside is all lit up, Rosalie said the inside is decorated much less.

Decorations keep increasing every year at the Tanti house, and new ones are bought every year.

“We buy new decorations each year, and reuse our old ones as well.” Rosalie said. “Alfred buys decorations wherever he finds, he even bought some for this year just as last year’s Christmas was over.”

Throughout the festive month, the decorations are turned on as soon as it gets dark, and are usually turned off either by timer or mobile phone around midnight. On Christmas Eve, they usually leave them on until 3am.

The family buys most of their decorations locally, but their favourite decoration of this year, lit-up pink and purple trees, were bought online. “They’re our favourite items of this year, as well as the tree arch around the front.”

However, the Tanti family aren’t the only ones who love decorating their house, as more and more households are decorating their homes with decorations inside and out.

“This year, more people are decorating outside their houses,” Daniela Gafa, salesgirl at Alistair Floral Design Birkirkara agreed. The shops often decorate people’s houses for them, having calls from as early as September. The shop, which is usually a wedding and events floral design business, completely transforms itself into a Christmas shop from October until the end of the year. Apart from decorating homes and businesses, they also sell personalised wreaths, personalised baubles, centrepieces and anything one would need for a party.   

(Photo: James Bianchi/MediaToday)

“We offer Christmas services from September, but people often start buying festive decorations as early as August,” Daniela said.

Owner Alistair Fenech started the business 12 years ago, completely focusing on Christmas decorations and flowers. Eventually, the shop opened around six years ago, and focuses on wedding, houses, and festive decorations.

“Christmas is by far one of the most popular feasts,” she said. “Although people do buy decorations for Valentine’s, Easter and other holidays, Christmas is usually the most busy one.”

As early as September, people would want the shop to decorate their houses for Christmas, both inside and out, and some customers constantly go to the shop to buy decorations.

“Christmas is a busy time and we usually sell everything we have... we don’t have left-over stock or sales.”

Although other holidays like Easter are busy, Christmas is their most popular time. In fact, the shop doesn’t even focus much on Halloween, because they’re usually already busy with Christmas.