THERE’S a fine line between decorating your home tastefully for the festive season and outing yourself as a tasteless pleb. Our guide tells you what is acceptable.
Inflatable snowman
Invariably looming and hideous like something from a nightmare and kept inflated with a noisy motor that disturbs the peace of the whole crescent.
Working-class rating: Common
Light-up presents and candy canes
A tough one to call. Good quality ones can be quite tasteful and jolly, and the American influence suggests a certain cultural sophistication. Also illuminates your year-round herb garden.
Working-class rating: Indeterminate
Outdoor figures of Simpsons in Santa hats
Nothing shouts ‘white van man’ like a glowing Homer Simpson with only the most cursory Christmas connection.
Working-class rating: Staffie, tracksuit and fights outside pubs
Large plastic Christmas tree
Not having a real tree is shamefully nouveau, but the really big plastic ones are expensive and you may simply have better things to do than endlessly pick up pine needles.
Working-class rating: Fine for barristers, doctors and Stacey Solomon alike
Minimalist fairy lights
Whether neatly affixed to your porch or draped on a shrub, these lights are boring but do not really have any class connotations. Unless set on ‘twinkle’, which is tacky.
Working-class rating: Acceptable for white-collar professionals as long as everyone else on the new-build estate also has them
Life-size Santa, sleigh and reindeer on your roof
This OTT exercise in showing off strongly suggests you are either a lottery winner or a builder coining it in by fiddling your tax.
Working-class rating: You are the King of the Chavs, and this is your crown
