The Festive Toolbox: decorate your blog for Christmas!
As Christmas approaches, many bloggers choose to decorate not only their homes but their websites in anticipation of the festive season.
From decorative blog templates to simple icons and snow effects, there are many ways our blogs can generate some festive spirit. In this post, I’ll share some of the best resources and methods I have found which you can use to enhance your blog design to celebrate Christmas with your readers.
Christmas Blog Templates
The most dramatic way you could update your blog for the Christmas season is to adopt (at least temporarily) a festive blog theme.
Here are some of the best free Christmas blog themes (organized by platform) for you to download:
Wordpress themes
Merry Christmas (Blog oh Blog)
A simple, wide theme with colored sections in the footer
Read more and download Merry Christmas Wordpress Theme
Christmas Days by Design Disease
A two column theme with integrated Flickr feed (perfect for sharing your visual memories of the season!)
Christmas Gifts Theme by Amazing Christmas Ideas
A simple yet elegant two column theme which is widget ready.
Vermillion Theme for Wordpress
This elegant theme uses unusual festive colors yet appears stylish and well organized.
A bright three column theme with widgetized sidebars
Blogger Templates
Snowman Blogger Template by SkinCorner
A two column theme with feative header and sidebar headings
Birdie’s Enchanted Christmas by Gisele Jaquenod
A beautiful theme from Gisele’s “Birdie” template series
Merry Christmas Night by Pyzam
A simple festive template for Blogger blogs
Joomla Templates
Merry Christmas by Design for Joomla.com
FNB Christmas by Free Net Builders
A candy-cane theme in festive colors for Joomla
Traditional Christmas Joomla Theme by Invision Graphics
Here is a traditiona, Santa Claus inspired theme to decorate your Joomla CMS for the festive season. Note: registration is required to download this theme.
More free Christmas templates for you to download
For those of you using a different CMS, here are some festive CSS based templates which you could convert for your own platform:
Santa Claus CSS Template by CSS Creme
Seasons Greetings by Karen Blundell
Christmas Template by Karen Blundell
Festive icon sets
If changing your whole template for the holidays is a bit too drastic, why not decorate with some free festive icons and images instead?
Here is a selection of free icon sets for you to download and use to decorate your blog:
Christmas icons from CleverIcons
This icon set is free to use, even for commercial projects!
Christmas Holiday Icons from N-Design Studio
These cute icons are delivered in PNG, GIF, EPS and ICO format for free use in your personal and commercial projects.
Christmas Surprise by DryIcons
This is free for personal use only (license fee required for commercial license)
19 icons, each measuring 128px square for free personal use
VistaICO Christmas Icons from Vista Icons
Contains 25 high quality icons
Christmas RSS Icons by Sudilkovsky Denis
Christmas Social Bookmark icons by Dirceu Viega
Includes 17 social bookmark icons with a festive theme.
Santa Claus Hat Icons by Dirceu Veiga
Festive JavaScripts and Effects
Here are a selection of JavaScripts and effects which you can add to your blog for festive decoration. All of these scripts are free to use, though you may be required to credit the author (particularly if you write about the scripts you are using) so please be sure to check the usage notices for each site.
Simple falling snow effect by Dynamic Drive
This simple script creates a falling snow effect using the image of a snowflake. The flakes fall down the page and then disappear (as though they fall off the screen).
You can configure the speed and number of snowflakes directly within the script, and could even use a different image instead of the snowflake offered. [View/Download this script]
Snow effect without images by Kurt Grigg
This JavaScript based snow effect uses no images for the “snowflakes” and is a much more subtle way of adding a snowy effect to your blog pages.
It is best used against a dark background so the tiny snowflakes can be easily seen.
[Learn more and download this script]
DHTML Snowstorm (with wind effect) by Scott Schiller
This interesting script allows you to change the direction and speed of the wind to affect the snowstorm effect on your web pages.
It works in almost all browsers, and requires only one line of code in your blog pages to generate the snowstorm effect.
[Learn more and download script]
Annual Occasions Countdown by JavaScript Kit
This simple script allows you to countdown to any date (eg: Christmas, New Year) and is easily configured for your needs. [Learn more and download script]
Countdown to Christmas Clock from EmailSanta.com
This script will add a festive Christmas countdown clock to your web pages which can be seen in action on the Email Santa website. You should be able to configure the images and styling of the clock to better suit the needs of your own blog design.
[Read more and download this script]
JavaScript Advent Calendar
Here is a cute advent calendar which you could offer to your blog readers. Each number on the calendar opens a pop-up window to which you can add an image, message or even a festive download!
This script would take some time to configure for your own requirements, but as a daily reward for yoru readers it could prove a worthwhile addition to your blog 
[Read more and download this script]
Last clicks…
If you still cannot find the festive resources you need to decorate your blog this Christmas, why not check out some of the design and Christmas resources below:
- Over 100 free Christmas design resources
- Design a Christmas themed web layout in Photoshop
- 25 Winter snow and christmas high-res wallpapers
- Free Christmas Holiday Icons Round-up
- 48 Ice, snowflake and Christmas brushes for Photoshop
I hope this article has provided you with some useful
Written by Amanda Fazani from Blogger BusterPosted on December 1st, 2008 and filed under Design & Coding
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15 Responses to “The Festive Toolbox: decorate your blog for Christmas!”
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WoW! Huge collection of templates for Christmas..
http://www.smartbloggerz.com
Some of these are really fun and festive. Some…ummm, well, not so much. Thanks for sharing though.
Wow! A great list for christmas! Planning to use the feed and the social bookmark icons for my blog!
Fun! Thanks so much … now I’ve got a whole bunch of links to click…
It’s better to just keep your current theme and get the header logo done. However that usually costs money.
-Mike
Holy cow, this is gonna be fun!
This is going to be fun thank you
I like the icons.
Is there a way to get the “Simple falling snow effect by Dynamic Drive” on blogger ?
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Great list! Lots of good resources here, I can’t wait dig through them all and add some holiday cheer to my blog.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year guys !!!
The Chronicles of R
I must admit, decorating your website for christmas is so much fun and cheaper than decorating the house. Not that it’s not fun decorating the house but I guess they are just two different type of joy and experience. For house, decorating the house for christmas with your lover or family is the best.