Decorate your Mac for the Holidays

There are only a few days left until Christmas, and I am definitely feeling festive. The tree is trimmed, presents are wrapped, cookies are baked, and now the only thing that remains is to bring some holiday cheer to my computer. Here I’ll show you some fun freeware that will help you “decorate” your Mac for Christmas. Leave a comment below if you know of other applications that might be useful.

X-masTree

It’s just not Christmas without a tree, and now you can get (an artificial) one for your computer. X-MasTree is a fun app that allows you to decorate your very own digital tree with a variety of colored lights and ornaments including popcorn garland. One fun customization option is choosing the tree color (white, purple, and red are just a few options). Unfortunately there’s no silver tree effect, but the white comes pretty close. With the simple click of the mouse you can also display how many days are left until Christmas.

MacLampsX

MacLampsX is a highly customizable app that lets you frame your Desktop with a string of Christmas lights, holly leaves, and snowflakes. In the Preferences panel choose between a three types of static or flashing bulbs and easily set the speed at which the bulbs blink. I prefer the C9 bulbs because they remind me of my childhood Christmas trees, but you can choose mini or pearl bulbs as well.

Holiday Wallpaper

An excellent source for Holiday wallpaper is Vladstudio. If you are a registered user (as in a paid subscriber) you can download high quality and widescreen wallpapers. However, there are also free “low quality” options, which in my opinion look quite nice on my Cinema Display. Here are a few great examples:

Holiday Screensavers

Don’t let your Desktop have all the fun! Here are two festive screensavers that will keep your computer in the holiday spirit even when you’ve stepped away for a bit. Apple’s 3D Dancing Christmas Elf screensaver includes a psychedelic rainbow-colored background filled with candy canes, snowflakes, and Christmas ornaments. And yes, there is music to accompany the elf while he’s shaking his groove thang!

Another screensaver option that will carry you through the winter months is LotsaSnow. This screensaver will draw falling snowflakes down your screen, and the best part is that every snowflake is unique.

Christmas Icons

After you’re finished finding a great background image for your Desktop you might want to customize some of your system icons, which is easy to do using LiteIcon. Note that there is a now Leopard-compatible beta version which can be found here. Here are some examples of Holiday-themed icons available for download from Iconfactory

Enjoy decorating your Mac for the Holidays! Best Wishes for a Healthy and Happy New Year from all of us here at Zaphu!