People are just realising they've been hanging Christmas tree lights all wrong

13 December 2023 , 10:06

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Apparently, we've been decorating our Christmas trees wrong (stock image) (Image: Getty Images/Westend61)

Hanging the Christmas tree lights is a tradition people either treasure or become frustrated by, and while you might have thought it was a pretty straight-forward job, it turns out there's a 'correct' way of doing it.

A Christmas tree just doesn't look right without the twinkle of 100s of lights, but compared to hanging the baubles, it can be quite a tricky job. They often get tangled up in branches, and you have to be careful to distribute them evenly so it looks good.

But while most of us would take the wire and feed it round and round the tree to make sure they are spread out, it turns out there's a better way of doing it. According to former pro Christmas tree decorator Clare Hooper, from Bradford in West Yorkshire, this way of coiling lights around the tree is wrong.

In a video posted to her TikTok account @mrsclarehoops, she explained that the 'zig-zag' is the best way, because it means you "don't waste lights at the back of your tree, and if a set breaks you can take them off really easily". The 46-year-old, who explained this used to be part of her job, demonstrated the method, which involves hanging the lights from the top to the bottom of the tree.

Clare started by hanging the lights from the left side of the top of the Christmas tree, and feeding the wire all the way down to the bottom in a straight line, before attaching it to the bottom branch. Then she brought the wire to the top again. In a zig-zag motion, she repeated it until the lights were lined up all the way across the tree.

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Many people who saw the video, which has been viewed over 7.3million times, were blown away by the method, with one person asking: "Where has this been our whole lives."

Another wrote: "I do this. It's so much easier and if you don't have much lights, you can make it be enough." A third person wrote: "Omg this is the best hack ever," while someone else added: "Perfect. This is what I'm gonna do this Christmas."

Another woman claimed you should try putting lights up the trunk of your tree to make it "extra bright". Kelly, who also uploaded a video to TIkTok, shared how she started from the bottom and worked her way up the core of the tree. Once she reached the top, she took another string of lights for the branches.

How do you decorate your Christmas tree? Let us know in the comment section below.

Ariane Sohrabi-Shiraz