• Through the years, families have decorated their homes for the holidays.
• Tinsel-covered Christmas trees and brightly colored stockings are trends that now seem dated.
• However, holiday light displays have only become more spectacular.

With the holiday season in full swing, many families are decking the halls.

However, some common holiday decorations like tinsel, ceramic Christmas trees, and colorful stockings, feel more nostalgic, and could even be inspiring holiday decorating trends this year.

Leaning into nostalgic holiday decorations can also be a way to save money, especially as 31% of people say they plan to spend less on holiday shopping this year than last year, WalletHub reported.

Many resurging decorating trends, from cranberry or orange garlands to vintage Christmas villages, can either be made at home or found in thrift stores.

Take a look back at how people decorated their homes for the holidays in years past.

By the 1920s, some families were decorating their Christmas trees with electric lights.

Electric lights replaced the long-held tradition of attaching lit candles to branches.

By the 1930s and '40s, families were decorating their Christmas trees with festive candy canes and strands of tinsel.

Tinsel added sparkle to the tree, while candy canes could be used as both holiday snacks and festive decorations.

However, wartime shortages in the 1940s also meant families had to conserve with handmade ornaments and less tinsel than usual.

Tinsel, which was often made with metallic materials, had to be rationed for the war effort.

Christmas stockings were typically made of red or green felt and trimmed with bells.

People still use similar stockings today, hung by the fireside with care.

By the mid-1950s, tinsel and other elaborate decorations were back in full swing.

There were tinsel garlands or long strands of metallic tinsel called icicles, like on the tree shown above.

Hanukkah tables were often decorated with ornate tablecloths.

Menorahs could also be simple or ornate to match the tablescape.

In the 1950s, ornaments became more uniform, and colored lights came into fashion.

Trees became centerpieces of the home for holiday entertaining, and fashionable sets of ornaments were sold to replace more homemade or collected ornament collections.

For holiday meals, families would break out a red tablecloth and festive-colored taper candles.

Taper candles are still commonly used in holiday table settings.

Strands of pearlescent beads were used to decorate Christmas trees in the 1960s.

"Silver and Gold," a famous Christmas song performed by Burl Ives in the 1964 film "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," embodied the Christmas tree-decorating trends of the time.

Some families, like President Lyndon B. Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, adorned their trees with strands of popcorn, colorful flowers, and mismatched ornaments.

White House Christmas decorations are now even more extravagant.

"Flocked" trees covered in fake snow were also trendy in the 1960s.

People DIY-ed the look by dipping their tree branches in laundry starch.

Lawn ornaments like snowmen and reindeer also grew in popularity.

Inflatable versions of these vintage-looking lawn ornaments are still commonly seen today.

Families in the 1970s embraced colorful decorations with tinsel garlands and knit stockings.

Some holiday decorating trends never go out of style.

One popular decoration was the light-up ceramic Christmas tree.

The lights were often multicolored and in the shape of miniature birds.

Christmas villages were also popular, and people would collect different scenes to create a miniature town for their mantel.

People would often add cotton wool or sparkly white felt to create a snowy environment for their miniature Christmas villages. This decorating trend is still popular today, either new or secondhand.

Many trends have remained the same throughout the years.

However, elaborate light displays are one trend that probably would have seemed out of place 100 years ago.

• Egypt has been a tourist destination for hundreds of years.
• But once the Suez Canal was completed in 1869 and Egyptology became popular, tourism skyrocketed.
• Here's what it was like to visit the land of the pharaohs in the 1920s.

Egypt has been a nation in some capacity since 3150 BCE, and the land has changed hands many times in the thousands of years since. Modern Egypt as we know it was officially founded in 1954, when the British occupation of the territory finally ended.

When the British took over the region in the 1800s, they oversaw the completion of the Suez Canal. According to the journal The Suez Canal: Past Lessons and Future Challenges, the canal made it much easier for tourists to make their way to Egypt after it opened in 1869.

At the turn of the 20th century, other developments continued to make Egypt an attractive destination for visitors. After the 1919 Egyptian Revolution against the British occupation, the British Empire recognized the Kingdom of Egypt in 1922, while still keeping it under British control. That same year, the tomb of Tutankhamun was discovered, sparking a new wave of tourism.

The rise of the study of ancient Egypt, known as Egyptology, has long inspired people to visit the country, as seen in films like 1999's "The Mummy." Tourism has remained a huge part of Egypt's economy, although it was badly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2011 uprising that toppled then-President Hosni Mubarak.

However, it's bouncing back. According to Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, a record-breaking 14.9 million tourists visited Egypt in 2023, a number that could be surpassed this year. More than 8 million visited in the first seven months of 2024, and revenue brought in from tourism in the first half of 2024 reached $6.6 billion.

Here's what it was like to visit Egypt 100 years ago.

1918: A boat on the shores of Imbaba, an area of northern Giza.

1920: A view of a railway station in Alexandria, the first of its kind in Egypt.

1920: A group of tourists gaze at the Sahara Desert from the top of the Great Pyramid of Giza, which is the tomb of pharaoh Khufu.

Circa 1920s: A camel rider basks by an oasis near Cairo, with the pyramids behind.

Circa 1920s: A photo shows a bustling street in Heliopolis, a suburb of Cairo.

1922: A group of American, English, and French tourists try riding camels in the Sahara.

1922: An image taken by a plane shows an aerial view of Cairo.

1922: The tomb of Tutankhamun, or King Tut, was discovered in 1922, 3,300 years after his death. An image shows objects in its antechamber.

1923: American tourists visit the Great Sphinx and Great Pyramid of Giza.

1925: Archaeologists work on the site of the Great Sphinx of Giza. It was first excavated in 1817.

1925: A group of visitors arrives at the entrance of KV62, another name for King Tut's tomb, in the Valley of the Kings outside of Thebes.

1925: A tourist poses outside of the Temple of Ramesses III, a pharaoh who ruled from 1186 to 1155 BCE, in Medinet Habu.

1925: A group of archaeologists photograph a funerary stele, which is a monument to the deceased.

1926: A view of Port Said, a city at the northern end of the Suez Canal.

1927: A view of the flooded Nile River. The Nile floods every year in the summer, and it has been a huge part of Egypt's agriculture since ancient times.

Source: BBC