Humour and Originality Slowly Enter the Vocabulary of Christmas Decoration

Introductory text to a survey in the magazine PRO města a obce (For Towns and Municipalities), October 2020.

Vrchlabí, Horažďovice, Jičín. Three towns that beautify the public space entrusted to them with Christmas decoration that increasingly plays with metaphor, poetry and hyperbole, without devaluing the content of the Christmas message. Humour and originality are slowly entering the vocabulary of Christmas decoration. As in all fields, however, what decides is education, awareness of cultural contexts and the ability to listen, though the temptation of subjective judgement is hard to resist. The balance we seek is created by competent approaches between suppliers and commissioners. A conceptual approach and an understanding of place – architectural, social and geographical – cultivates the dialogue of the parties involved, who are seeking the “genius loci”. The appeal of a decoration is determined first by aesthetic attributes and only then by budgets and technological novelties. As in other artistic fields, what decides is content and the manner of communicating it; the absence of content cannot be replaced by form.