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Remember those holidays at Grandma's, when the tree bowed under the weight of ornaments, chains hung from every corner, and baubles fought for space with the tinsel? And maybe Mom would sigh, "This is too much, Grandma," and Grandma would reply, "Too much? There's no such thing as 'too much' for Christmas!" As Maryla Rodowicz sang, "Long live the ball"—and a maximalist Christmas is exactly that, a ball, only with a festive twist. Pillovely understands that "for those who want more" isn't just a slogan—it's a lifestyle. And that's precisely why maximalism in the 2025 holidays isn't chaos, but celebration.

Remember that moment in elementary school, right before Christmas? The entire classroom would transform into a factory. The desks would be stocked with colored paper, tissue paper, glue sticks (which magically stuck everything together except paper), and round-tipped scissors. We'd make chains so long they could wrap around the entire school, and paper hedgehogs that looked more like car accident victims.

Remember those boxes in Grandma's attic, full of glass baubles from the '70s, '80s, maybe even earlier? Some shiny, others dull, scratched, with peeling paint. And you remember the feeling when Grandma would say, "This is a keepsake from your great-grandmother, it's a shame to throw it away." But at the same time, you saw that those baubles no longer looked the same – the paint had peeled off, the glass had darkened, the shine had vanished. As Czesław Niemen sang, "Strange is this world" – but even stranger when you have a bauble that remembers the communist era, and you don't know what to do with it.

There's a moment, at the end of November, when the world holds its breath. We wait for that one signal. No, not the first Coca-Cola ad. We wait for the moment when the neighbor across the street finally lights up his lights. Then we know – it's begun. Christmas.

Remember those Christmases at your grandparents' in the countryside, when the house smelled of gingerbread baked for a week, and the tree was adorned with pine cones from the attic and straw angels made by Grandma? A wooden bench under the tree, linen tablecloths on the table, wicker baskets full of nuts. And that smell—cinnamon, cloves, honey, wood from the fireplace. This was rusticism before the word existed. As Marek Grechuta sang: "The world is wide open"—but sometimes the most beautiful world is the simplest, the closest to nature.

For us, the generation of 30- and 40-somethings, this film is an absolute classic and a Christmas time machine. But Home Alone isn't just a brilliant film. It's the setting that shaped our dreams of the perfect Christmas. That gigantic living room, awash in red and green, gold doorknobs, patterned wallpaper, fireplace, and a Christmas tree so large it barely fit in the frame. It was the American dream, the quintessence of holiday splendor.