Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the "holiday decor at the celebrity level" waters, here comes Kim Kardashian's all-white, all-fluffy theme to challenge everything you've ever thought about the concept of "festive". You'd be forgiven for being lulled into a sense of calm about this year's most public decorations. Earlier this month, it was revealed that we were getting the year off from the White House's unrelenting campaign of perplexing, expensively post-apocalyptic holiday decorations when they pivoted to an aesthetic that could be described as "Be Best is still a thing? With ghost cities?"
This year, the national fever dream known as the "Be Best campaign" incorporated a secondary theme of "playing cards" as if to remind hopeful youths around the nation "the house always wins! Merry Christmas and nothing else whatsoever!"
And, in the place that, in previous years, they filled the halls with nightmarish red trees that seemed cribbed directly from the scene in The Shining where the halls fill up with blood, they installed glass panes etched with images from cities around the country.
Simple, eerie, haunting, like a scene set on a spaceship carrying humanity's last survivors to a new colony on Mars. For the holidays! But don't worry, frequent Oval Office visitor Kim Kardashian West and ko. have taken on the White House's mantle. In an Instagram video, KKW revealed that they'd combined those jarring red trees with the White House's 2017 all-white aesthetic to come up with something both stark and serene. You know, like sleep paralysis. FOR THE HOLIDAYS.
White House 2017...
plus White House 2018...
equals KKW House 2019:
At the risk of never getting an invite to Sunday Service, I have to say I love the stark design theme of Kim and Kanye's house where the predominant ideas seem to be "what if all sharp edges and unforgiving surfaces?" and "ECRU!" Their house looks like the set of a Star Trek episode where Kirk and Spock meet a society of monks who live below the radioactive surface of an alien planet. Spock briefly considers joining the order before Uhuru realises that the monks have using the flickering light of their ancient fire to hypnotise Spock. Spock rips off his MAGA hat and returns to the Enterprise at the last minute. A classic!
The snuggly, hygge vibe of the fluffy pillars adds a welcome if perplexing softness to the otherwise severe landscape. I don't mind it, even though I resolutely do not understand it. They sort of look like props from a Honey, I Shrunk the... movie. Like, in real life they're little tufts of Q-tip fuzz but to the eponymous shrunken people they rise up like a soft and immovable fortress. Admit it, you would totally watch a movie called Honey, I Shrunk the Kardashians. Kanye is working on a groundbreaking project with a shady scientist (played by Jonah Hill) when things go awry right in the middle of filming an episode of KUWTK, trapping Kim, Kris, Kourtney, and Khloe in a tiny world as Kanye and, controversially, Tristan Thompson, must race against time to embiggen them again.
The idea of Kim running from a giant ant and then sitting down in the confessional to complain about it will sustain me for the rest of my days.
Anyway, back to the house. To quote John Lennon out of context, "So... this is Khristmas." Kim and Kanye are richer than I will ever be and they have no possessions whatsoever. What is this, Walden Pond West?
Where is all your stuff?! Why don't you have any dust? How are we going to make a Honey, I Shrunk the Kardashians cinematic universe when there's literally nothing on any of the surfaces? They're going to shrink down and it'll just look like they're on an even larger blank expanse. They'll be looking around like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction but on a movie set that hasn't had the CGI added yet.
In any case, kongratulations to Kim and Kanye and Krampus on successfully putting the Marie Kondo back in Marie Khristmas.
R. Eric Thomas is a columnist for ELLE.com, where he skewers politics, pop culture, celebrity shade, and schadenfreude. He is also the author of Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America, a memoir-in-essays.
