Decorate your Windows desktop for Christmas
If you like to decorate your house or apartment for Christmas by adding a Christmas Tree and another decorations around the house, you'd probably also like to do the same for your computer screen.
Decorations for Christmas range from changing the desktop background over installing a new Christmas theme to running all sorts of applications on your system that add Christmas and seasonal effects to it.
We have covered quite a few of those in the past, but never published a single article listing all of them.
This article covers Christmas decorations for the PC that we have reviewed earlier, and new programs and options that came out after we have published the reviews here on Ghacks.
Christmas Software for Windows
Designs and themes
You can check out this list of winter and Christmas themes for Windows 7 published by Microsoft as a starting point. They have been designed for Windows 7, but can also be installed in Windows 8 and newer versions because of it.
Most change the desktop background of the system and the default color scheme only.
Besides those that we have already mentioned in our last article, there are others that Microsoft has released in the meantime.
The Snowy Night theme for Windows features 13 snow and Christmas themed wallpapers that your computer will rotate between when you install it.
Windows 7 users can check out the Windows 7 Christmas theme over on Deviant art which packs 11 HD Christmas wallpapers, five new Christmas icons and a new cursor.
Christmas Theme Windows 8 on the other hand is a HD wallpaper pack for Microsoft's newest operating system Windows 8.
All themes can be installed without having to patch system files. If you are using a different version of Windows, you can still download the theme file and extract it using a program such as 7-Zip to gain access to the wallpapers it contains.
If you are looking for individual wallpaper images, check out the following resource sites that offer plenty of them:
- Christmas on Alphacoders
- Christmas on Desktop Nexus
- Christmas Wallpapers on HD Wallpapers
- Christmas Wallpapers on Deviant Art
- Snow on Desktop Nexus
- Snow wallpapers on Deviant Art
Christmas Software
The free program DesktopSnowOK adds snow to your PC screen. You can modify several parameters, like the number of flakes on the screen at the same time, the speed, or how the flakes look like. It is a lightweight unobtrusive program that works really well in the background.
An alternative is Desktop Snow HD, but it is limited in comparison as there is no option to change how the snowflakes look like.
The animated Christmas tree program on the other hand adds a blinking festive Christmas tree to the PC. While I think that this is too much of a distraction when you are working on your PC, it may work well if you do not but have the PC on.
Christmas in New York and Christmas in Prague on the other hand are animated desktop apps that display an animated cityscape of New York or Prague on your desktop. Animated means that you will notice snow falling down, a night and day shift, and that the days left until Christmas is displayed there as well.
From the same developer comes Animated Christmas Tree for Desktop, a free application to add an animated Christmas Tree to your desktop.
Closing Words
I'd like to know if you are changing the theme or wallpaper when Christmas comes around, or if you are a user who goes the extra mile and runs Christmas software as well on the PC.
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Thanks, great post. I really like your post!
Best for christmas. i would suggest it should be with verses which inspires more those who don’t read BIBLE and celebrate christmas only as festival, but not as a christian.
Could open the winter theme file on my Windows 7, file unknown. So I used winrar to open the file and selected one of the files as background.
Strange, but if you just wanted the wallpapers, then it is probably even better to extract the theme file and use them this way.