Designing Secular Christmas Custom Products for Diverse Faith Families

Designing holiday products used to be simple. You put a Christmas tree on a mug, added some red and green, maybe a Santa, and called it a season. That approach is no longer enough. Families today include Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Pagans, spiritual-but-not-religious members, and people who do not identify with any faith at all. As a senior mentor in the e-commerce and print-on-demand space, I have watched the brands that grow fastest treat this shift not as a constraint, but as one of the biggest creative and commercial opportunities of the year.

Research from Front Range Community College, citing Pew Research Center, notes that about nine in ten Americans celebrate Christmas in some form, religious or cultural. At the same time, work on religious holidays from institutions such as Northeastern University and the University of Arizona Global Campus highlights how many other winter observances matter deeply to people, from Hanukkah and Kwanzaa to Diwali, Yule, Las Posadas, and Eid. The Society for Human Resource Management adds another crucial dimension: roughly three quarters of the United States population is Christian, but about 21 percent identifies with no religion. That mix is now reflected inside individual households, not just across neighborhoods.

If you sell on-demand holiday products and dropship globally, that reality needs to shape your designs. In this article we will translate inclusive-holiday research, decor trends, and accessibility guidance into concrete strategies for secular Christmas product lines that feel festive, respect diverse faiths, and sell strongly across multiple customer segments.

The New Holiday Landscape And Why It Matters

Human resources experts describe late November through early January as the “December dilemma.” Several religious and secular holidays overlap, emotions run high, and even well-meaning choices about decor or events can leave some people feeling invisible. SHRM has documented how even a small group of excluded employees can hurt engagement and performance. The same pattern applies in consumer markets. A holiday product that makes one member of a household feel like a guest in their own living room is unlikely to become a cherished staple.

Marketing research published by MOO points in the same direction. Only about 41 percent of U.S. consumers feel represented in advertising, yet 71 percent want brands to prioritize diversity and inclusion. They also report that 64 percent of people take action after seeing an ad they consider inclusive, and that more diverse creative is about 90 percent more likely to be remembered. Inclusive holiday design is not just the “right thing”; it is a competitive edge.

Decor and design writers see these shifts up close. Laurel Bern uses a fictional reader she calls Holly to represent a very real blended family: one partner is Jewish, the other Catholic, the children have mixed ethnic backgrounds, and extended relatives range from very observant to not religious at all. For families like this, a house drenched in red-and-green Christmas symbolism or royal blue Hanukkah motifs can feel like it is choosing sides. In a school library described by a public educator, even a carefully balanced mix of Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa decorations still centered Christianity and left some Muslim, Hindu, and non-religious students feeling that the space was not really theirs.

For you as a seller, this context means that a narrow, explicitly religious holiday line will always have a market, but a thoughtfully secular Christmas line can reach far more households and corporate buyers. The goal is not to erase religious meaning; it is to create products that let diverse faith families celebrate together without anyone needing to step back.

What “Secular Christmas” Really Means In Product Terms

Inclusive decor experts give us a clear working definition. Laurel Bern talks about “inclusive holiday decor” as largely secular and non-denominational, focused on atmosphere, color, and mood rather than overt symbols of any single tradition. The Catholic and Christian craft blogs in the research show the opposite end of the spectrum: nativity scenes, Bible verses, and “Names of Jesus” ornaments that are deeply meaningful for believers but clearly not neutral.

The New Zealand designer behind Copper Catkin goes one step further and offers a useful phrase for product designers: “secular ornaments.” She defines these as non-religious, non-seasonal decorations designed to be used anywhere, any time, not just at Christmas. Her customers were frustrated that they had to take beautiful ornaments down after the holidays, so she began developing simplified laser-cut acrylic designs with nature and animal motifs that could stay up year-round.

Educators operating under strict secular policies offer another angle. A classroom guide from Raymond Geddes shows how teachers build winter celebrations around snow, snowflakes, and origami stars instead of religious imagery. The librarian who chose not to decorate for religious holidays at all now focuses on student art and work as decor. In both cases, the message is that spaces meant for everyone avoid taking a stand on faith while still feeling warm and seasonal.

Taken together, these sources suggest a working definition for your catalog.

Secular Christmas products are items that carry the emotional and visual cues of the winter holidays while avoiding exclusive religious symbols or language. They make room for Christmas traditions as cultural rituals, but they are safe for interfaith families, secular households, charities, and companies committed to inclusive practices.

The table below contrasts three broad approaches you can consider when mapping your product ranges.

You can absolutely operate across all three zones, but the secular column is where under-served demand and scalable print-on-demand opportunities often lie.

Core Design Principles For Inclusive Secular Christmas Products

Anchor Your Designs In Universal Seasonal Themes

Across the holidays covered by Northeastern University and UAGC, several themes repeat regardless of theology. Light overcoming darkness appears in Christmas tree lights, Hanukkah menorahs, Kwanzaa kinaras, Diwali lamps, and Yule candles. Community gatherings, generosity, and remembrance are present in Las Posadas processions, Eid-al-Adha feasts, and Kwanzaa’s closing celebrations.

A secular Christmas line can lean hard into those shared motifs. Think of patterns based on stars, lanterns, single candles in windows, or abstract light rays. Consider illustrations of shared meals without specific religious foods. Use silhouettes of families walking in the snow, hands passing gifts, or neighbors sharing treats. Witchcrafted Yule projects demonstrate how evergreen branches, berries, and simple twig stars can evoke renewal and the return of the sun without referencing any specific faith.

When you design slogans or typography for wall art, cards, and apparel, favor language that fits multiple traditions.

Phrases like “Season of Light,” “Gather and Give,” or “Welcome Winter” can sit comfortably in a Christian home, an interfaith apartment, or a secular library. Pink Fortitude’s explicitly Christian designs show how words like “For Unto Us” or “O Come Let Us Adore Him” anchor products firmly inside one tradition; you can use that contrast to check whether your copy truly reads as secular.

Use Color To Signal Season, Not Sect

Color is one of the fastest ways a design announces its cultural allegiance. Laurel Bern notes that standard red-and-green palettes scream Christmas, while blue and white, often accented with silver or gold, have become shorthand for Hanukkah. She argues that much mass-market decor, especially for Hanukkah, looks childish and cartoonish, and encourages more sophisticated palettes that feel seasonal rather than sectarian.

She highlights schemes built around layered blues, soft whites, and deeper blue-green walls that feel equally at home during Hanukkah, Christmas, or Thanksgiving. For clients who want a Hanukkah-friendly room without the clichéd royal blue, she suggests olive greens with gold or even orange and gold with green accents that transition smoothly from fall to winter.

Miss Mustard Seed offers a complementary approach: change a room’s mood from spring to winter by rotating textures and everyday items rather than relying on overt holiday colors. She emphasizes baskets, knits, slipcovers, and glass jars in warm neutrals as the backbone of a winter look.

For your print-on-demand catalog, this suggests a few strategies.

Offer winter collections in several palettes that are not tied to a single religious tradition. For example, you might create throw pillows and blankets in deep forest green and warm gold, another set in layered blues with cream, and a third in charcoal, soft white, and muted copper. If you do produce explicitly Christmas designs in classic red and green, keep those clearly labeled so customers who want neutral items are not surprised.

Balance Familiar Icons With Neutral Motifs

The Quora discussion on how non-Christians decorate their homes shows that many people who do not identify as Christian still enjoy certain “traditional” Christmas items. They put up trees, hang stockings, string lights, and use wreaths or mistletoe, often treating these as cultural rather than religious symbols. At the same time, that same answer highlights items like nativity scenes and biblical stars that are clearly tied to Christian narratives.

The SHRM guidance on inclusive office decor warns specifically about uncritically turning a “holiday party” or space into a Christmas event in disguise, complete with large decorated trees, red and green everywhere, and no acknowledgement of other traditions. Laurel Bern makes a similar point visually: a menorah placed in an otherwise widely appealing seasonal vignette is very different from an entire room themed exclusively around one holiday.

For secular Christmas product design, a pragmatic rule of thumb emerges. Evergreen trees, fir branches, stockings, snowmen, and simple stars can usually be treated as secular motifs as long as they are not combined with explicit religious context. Nativity imagery, angels clearly tied to the gospel story, or text that references Jesus, the Maccabees, or specific Kwanzaa principles move you into faith-specific territory.

One effective tactic is to create modular product families.

You can offer a neutral “Winter Lights” throw pillow featuring abstract stars and a companion “Christmas Eve” version that adds a small church silhouette. That lets mixed-belief households layer in meaning as they choose, and it helps you serve both inclusive and faith-specific niches without confusing buyers.

Design For Sensory And Accessibility Needs

The Education Institute for Early Intervention outlines how typical holiday decor can overwhelm children with autism or sensory processing challenges. Flashing lights, loud animated decorations, crowded visual fields, glitter and artificial snow, and strong scents all create stress rather than joy. Their sensory-friendly recommendations include warm, static LED lights, a minimalist approach to decor, soft and familiar materials like felt, cotton, and yarn, and the creation of calm, neutral spaces where children can retreat.

Accessibility guidance from Envision extends the same thinking to people who are blind or low vision. They suggest emphasizing multisensory elements such as tactile ornaments, distinct textures, recognizable holiday scents like pine and cinnamon, and sound cues such as small bells on doors or garlands. They also stress the value of clear communication and verbal descriptions of visual displays so that everyone can participate in the experience.

These principles translate very directly into product decisions. For textiles and print layouts, favor clear, organized compositions over visual clutter. Avoid hyper-busy all-over patterns that become noise from a distance. Offer colorways with softer contrast alongside bolder ones. When possible in your supply chain, choose materials like felt appliqué, embroidery, or raised inks that add tactile interest without relying on glitter or rough, scratchy surfaces.

If your niche includes printed electronics, avoid products that blink, flash, or play music by default. Instead, consider silent designs that can be paired with separate audio devices chosen by the household. For scentable products, offer unscented versions and be explicit in your product pages about any fragrances used.

Accessibility is rarely the main selling point on a holiday mug or throw blanket. However, customers supporting neurodiverse children or visually impaired family members notice quickly when a brand clearly thought about their needs. That goodwill compounds year over year.

Product Opportunities For Secular Holiday Print-On-Demand

Year-Round Ornaments And Hanging Decor

Copper Catkin’s story is a direct blueprint for a profitable niche. Her family loved ornaments so much that taking the tree down felt like a loss. Instead of accepting that, she began designing “secular ornaments” deliberately meant to live on walls, windows, and plants all year. She simplified existing illustrated motifs into laser-cut shapes, experimented with different visual treatments, and, after consultation with a laser-cutting supplier, settled on clear acrylic with engraved or cut-out designs.

In print-on-demand terms, you can adapt that idea across multiple substrates. Acrylic ornaments, wood slices, metal tags, and even heavy card stock can all carry designs that feel like holiday pieces in December but transition seamlessly into “everyday” art afterward. Think of stylized animals, geometric snowflakes that read as general stars in other seasons, or botanical motifs that do not depend on pine branches and holly.

These items are particularly appealing to small apartments and minimalist households that do not want to store large boxes of seasonal decor.

They also pair well with the sustainability mindset of the secular homeschool family who wanted a reusable countdown calendar instead of disposable paper versions because they disliked waste.

Inclusive Soft Goods: Blankets, Pillows, And Apparel

Miss Mustard Seed demonstrates how much seasonal mood can be created just by rotating slipcovers, blankets, knitted pillows, and baskets. She rarely uses overt Christmas imagery, yet her rooms unmistakably shift into winter. At the corporate level, ePromos positions embroidered blankets, neutral apparel, and practical home goods as some of the most inclusive holiday gifts precisely because they are timeless and useful year-round.

Print-on-demand technology lets you combine these insights. Create throw blankets in cable-knit patterns printed in soft neutrals, with subtle snowflake or star motifs that can remain on a couch into February. Offer pillow covers with tone-on-tone winter forest silhouettes or abstract constellations labeled with messages about warmth and togetherness rather than specific holidays. Design sweatshirts and long sleeve shirts that use seasonal colors and hand-drawn textures but carry messages about family, rest, or gratitude that work for people regardless of faith.

Corporate buyers will gravitate toward designs without overt holiday symbols or dates, while blended-faith families will appreciate items that do not need to be hidden when certain relatives visit.

Secular Countdown Calendars And Activity Kits

The popularity of Advent calendars in Christian households and Jesse Tree ornament sets in Christian craft blogs reveals how much people enjoy countdown rituals. At the same time, a member of a secular homeschool group described wanting a permanent, reusable Christmas countdown calendar that did not rely on disposable paper and did not tie celebrations to religious themes. They imagined drawers that held special ornaments for the tree and activity prompts such as baking cookies.

Witchcrafted Yule projects likewise include a Winter Solstice countdown crafted from a spiral of salt dough, and teachers in the inclusive classroom article use recurring snowflake activities to mark the season. All these examples point to a powerful, under-served category: reusable, secular countdown products.

For print-on-demand sellers, that can include fabric wall calendars with numbered pockets, card decks with winter activities that work across beliefs, and bundle packs of small, neutral ornaments intended for “one a day” rituals. Activity prompts can focus on universally embraced themes: making a favorite recipe, calling a relative, donating toys, walking to see neighborhood lights, reading a winter story, or drawing snowflakes. The key is that nothing in the set assumes a specific doctrine.

Households that do celebrate a religious holiday can still layer their own practices on top. Your product’s job is to provide a beautiful, sustainable framework that does not exclude anyone.

Corporate-Ready Inclusive Gifts

The inclusive holiday gifting guide from ePromos is written for organizations, but its design logic is directly useful to you. They define inclusive holiday gifting as choosing practical, non–faith-specific, culturally neutral items that still feel personal and respectful. They recommend timeless drinkware, bags, notebooks, tech accessories, and wellness items such as spa kits and relaxation tools. They also stress avoiding explicit holiday imagery and choosing unisex or one-size-fits-all options.

If you position part of your catalog toward business buyers, design products they would feel comfortable sending to staff and clients regardless of background. A stainless tumbler printed with a subtle winter landscape and the phrase “Thank you for this year” is safer than a mug covered in Santas. A notebook with a winding trail of lights and a message about “Bright ideas for the new year” is safer than one that says “Christmas 2024.”

The MOO research suggests that inclusive campaigns drive real behavior. If your catalog and product photography clearly show workers of different ages, races, and abilities enjoying these neutral gifts, you are more likely to be the supplier a diversity-conscious HR team selects.

Brand And Marketing Strategy For Secular Holiday Lines

Telling An Inclusive Story Without Diluting Your Niche

Some founders worry that if they avoid explicitly religious language, they will appear bland or noncommittal. The SHRM and MOO materials suggest a more nuanced reality. It is entirely possible to say “Merry Christmas” to Christian audiences, “Happy Hanukkah” to Jewish ones, and “Happy Holidays” in general messaging, as long as you do not treat any one expression as the default or only correct one.

Your product copy, category names, and homepage banners can lean into universal themes of kindness, gratitude, celebration, and light while still acknowledging specific holidays in their proper context. For example, you might have a “Christmas at Home” collection with clearly Christian designs alongside a “Season of Light” collection designed for diverse faith families. The key is clarity. Customers should never have to guess whether a product is neutral or religious.

Being explicit about your intent also matters. When you explain that a certain line was created for interfaith or secular households, you validate those buyers and signal that their experience was considered from the start. That alone can be a differentiator in a market still dominated by single-faith assumptions.

Imagery, Representation, And Photography

MOO’s research on inclusive campaigns does not only speak to ad copy. It underscores the importance of who appears in your imagery. They argue that marketing should reflect real-world diversity in race, ethnicity, gender, age, and ability and warn against tokenism, where only one person of a given background appears as a checkbox.

Your product photography and lifestyle mockups should mirror that guidance. Show multi-generational groups using your secular decor, not only young nuclear families. Include darker and lighter skin tones, couples who may not look alike, and scenes that could plausibly be in a city apartment, a suburban house, and a smaller living space. If your designs are accessibility friendly, consider collaborating with creators who are blind, low vision, or neurodivergent and show them using your products in ways that feel natural.

At the same time, be careful not to sneak in background decor that sabotages your positioning. SHRM notes that red and green palettes are strongly associated with Christmas, while blue and white are associated with Hanukkah. Laurel Bern’s example of a Williams-Sonoma-style vignette shows how to do better. The walls, buffet, flowers, and food carry the seasonal mood; a menorah is present but not the entire theme. Use that as a model for your photos. Neutral winter elements first, any religious object second and optional.

Structuring Your Catalog For Diverse-Faith Customers

The classroom teacher and librarian who chose secular winter crafts and student art over religious decor were responding to constraints, but they stumbled on an organizing principle you can adapt. Instead of trying to “decorate for everything,” they chose a base layer of inclusive visuals and added context-specific elements only where appropriate.

Your catalog can do something similar. At the top level, you can organize by theme: Winter, Lights, Togetherness, Faith-Specific, and Corporate. Within those, you can further tag items with specific holidays when relevant. The key is that the secular, inclusive collections appear as first-class citizens, not as afterthoughts added to appease criticism.

Corporate buyers, schools, and libraries will gravitate immediately toward collections clearly labeled as secular or inclusive. Faith communities will go straight to sections aligned with their traditions. Diverse families will pick and choose across both, assembling a set of products that feels authentic to them.

Common Pitfalls When Designing For Diverse Faith Families

One common mistake is unintentionally creating a “Christmas party in disguise.” SHRM uses that phrase to describe corporate events, but the same pattern shows up in product catalogs. The homepage says “Holiday Shop,” but every hero image features Christmas trees, Santa figures, and red-and-green decor. A single menorah or kinara buried on page four does not make that inclusive. In decor terms, the librarian’s experience is instructive. Even a visually “balanced” mix of Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa elements still left some students feeling like their traditions were peripheral.

A second pitfall is overcorrecting toward a bland winter aesthetic that feels generic rather than intentional. Families are looking for warmth, personality, and story. Witchcrafted Yule projects, non-Christmas decor ideas from Miss Mustard Seed, and Copper Catkin’s year-round ornaments all show how to infuse meaning into neutral designs through nature symbolism, texture, color, and craftsmanship. An all-white, logo-only mug will not feel like a holiday gift, but a mug with a hand-drawn evergreen forest and a line about “gathering around warm drinks” often will.

A third risk is ignoring sensory and accessibility needs. Sensory-friendly guidelines from EIEI and accessible holiday advice from Envision show how standard holiday items can overwhelm or exclude. Products that flash, jingle constantly, or use scratchy glitter can be minor irritants to some and genuine barriers to others. With a small amount of forethought in your designs and product descriptions, you can avoid that problem entirely.

Finally, do not fall into majority-rule thinking. The librarian who polled students found that most wanted the library decorated for holidays, often “for all holidays,” yet they still chose a secular route because they prioritized not marginalizing the minority. In your business, this translates into calibrating product lines so that you can profit from mainstream Christmas demand without assuming that demand justifies ignoring everyone else.

Turning Principles Into A Holiday Collection

First, study your existing catalog and sales data from prior years. Identify which designs rely heavily on religious symbols or language and which already lean into universal themes of light, nature, and togetherness. This baseline audit will help you decide whether you need entirely new artwork or can repurpose and reframe existing designs.

Next, map out a simple collection structure that clearly separates faith-specific items from secular seasonal products. Use the three-approach framework from earlier as a checklist. If you discover that nearly everything you sell falls into the explicitly religious Christmas column, set a target to launch at least one substantial secular collection alongside it this season.

Then, design or commission artwork with the guidelines above in mind. Brief your designers with references from Laurel Bern for color and layering, Miss Mustard Seed for seasonal textures, Copper Catkin for secular ornament concepts, Witchcrafted Yule for nature symbolism, and the sensory-friendly and accessibility advice from EIEI and Envision for layout and material choices. Make sure your product templates cover a spread of items that families and corporate buyers actually shop for: textiles, drinkware, paper goods, small decor, and countdown or activity products.

After that, align your marketing story with your catalog changes. Revisit your seasonal email templates, ad copy, and social media posts in light of the MOO and SHRM findings. Adjust subject lines and headlines to avoid treating Christmas as the only story. Where appropriate, call attention to the fact that a certain collection was designed specifically for diverse faith families or for inclusive workplaces.

Finally, test and learn. Inclusive culture experts emphasize that success is not the absence of mistakes but the ability to respond well when something misses the mark. Invite feedback from customers about how your products land in their mixed-belief households. If you hear that a supposedly neutral design reads more religious than intended, treat that as design research, not criticism to be defended against. Over a few seasons, this loop will sharpen your instincts far more than any theoretical checklist.

FAQ

Q: Can I still design overtly religious products and call my brand inclusive? A: Yes, as long as those products sit alongside clearly labeled secular and multi-faith-friendly lines and your marketing does not treat any one tradition as the default. Many of the sources in this research, from SHRM to Northeastern University, emphasize both the importance of honoring specific holidays and the need to recognize others. Your task is to reflect that balance in what you offer and how you present it.

Q: How do I know if a symbol is “too religious” for a secular line? A: Look at context and associations. The research on decor and inclusive celebrations shows that items like trees, snowflakes, and simple stars are widely used in secular settings, while nativity scenes, crosses, and explicit references to Jesus, the Maccabees, or Kwanzaa principles are understood as religious. When in doubt, ask customers from different backgrounds and pay close attention to how they read your designs.

Q: Is it worth investing in sensory-friendly and accessible designs if most customers will never notice? A: The EIEI and Envision materials make a compelling case that the adjustments are often small while the impact is significant. Warm, static lights, simpler layouts, and comfortable textures improve the experience for everyone, not just those with diagnosed needs. Families who care about accessibility become loyal repeat buyers when they see their realities reflected in the way you design.

As you plan your next holiday collection, treat secular Christmas products not as a compromise, but as a canvas for deeper creativity and broader impact. The families and organizations you serve are already diverse; when your designs acknowledge that reality with care, your brand earns a place in their most meaningful winter rituals year after year.

References

1. https://cssh.northeastern.edu/religious-holidays-around-the-world-celebrating-christmas-hanukkah-and-kwanzaa/
2. https://www.uagc.edu/blog/eight-seasonal-holidays-from-around-the-world
3. https://blog.frontrange.edu/2019/12/18/holiday-traditions-around-the-world/
4. https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/hr-magazine/how-to-make-holiday-celebrations-inclusive
5. https://www.travelandleisure.com/all-inclusive-resort-packing-list-7485542
6. https://ahundredaffections.com/christian-christmas-ornament-crafts-kids-adults/
7. https://www.coppercatkin.com/blog/secular-ornaments-for-every-day
8. https://eieiservices.com/sensory-friendly-decorations-for-a-peaceful-holiday-environment/
9. https://laurelberninteriors.com/inclusive-holiday-decor-that-is-not-red-and-green/
10. https://www.letsenvision.com/blog/holidays-accessible