Santa better start endurance training.
He will need the heart of a marathoner and detailed blueprints before entering Kim Kardashian’s mansion this Christmas. On Tuesday, in a video that divided fans, Ms. Kardashian unveiled her “Kimsmas” 2025 decor in a home that is as warm and cosy as an airplane hangar on a snowy December night.
“Hey, we just finished decorating for the holidays,” she begins in her sultry vocal fry, as the camera pans to reveal more trees than you’d find at Sheridan Nurseries. “I can’t even begin to explain to you what this smells like …”
Let me guess: Chanel No. 5? Diffused Bulgarian rose? Burning cash?
Baby Jesus? Close your eyes for this tour. The extravagance will make you weep.
Kardashian slow walks through her labyrinthine, 17,000-square-foot manse that now contains about 17,000 trees. And not the kind of trees you or I might strap to our car roof while driving home slowly and not taking any sharp turns.
These ones are “flocked” with fake snow and prelit, presumably by moonlighting engineers from Sylvania. Wherever she points the camera … twinkling trees. I haven’t seen this many trees since I was lost in the Bois de Boulogne.
“Look at the hallway,” she instructs. Which hallway?
The only surface that is not decked out with boughs of folly is the Steinway & Sons grand piano. Makes sense. Kim has hired Grammy-winning pianist Philip Cornish to swing by every morning this month to play Christmas music as her family prepares for another day on Instagram.
“Away in a Manger” is tricky when branches droop over the sheet music.
I asked AI to ballpark the cost of Kimsmas 2025. Estimates are in U.S. dollars:
Large Flocked Christmas Trees: $250,000 to $500,000. Custom Winter Wonderland Sculptures: $100,000 to $300,000. Fairy Lights and Ambient Lighting: $50,000 to $150,000. Designer Ornaments and Garlands: $25,000 to $75,000. Live Music: $5,000 to $15,000. Hang on.
Hidden elf props cost more than Cornish? He should go to Mariah Carey’s house.
The total estimate is $700,000 to $1.3 million. And me and AI didn’t get a peek at the outdoor decor around the infinity pool and guest house where the butlers, maids and food testers are now frantically trying to unionize before Easter.
Live and let live. That is my motto. Kardashian is a billionaire. She can spend her loot as she pleases. She trusts her marketing savvy to serve as an eternal cash pipeline full of wacky ideas, such as a micro thong with fake pubic hair. If she wants to put a North Pole pop-up in the grand foyer, fine. Turn her 10 bathrooms into Narnia? Her call.
This woman once decorated her trees with hundred dollar bills. Kimsmas 2026 may involve reindeers dressed in festive Gucci and eggnog served in cracked open Fabergé eggs.
But is 2025 the right time to be parading such astronomical wealth?
Her fans are not immune to the affordability crisis that has made a trip to the grocery store more stressful than a spinal fusion. Their monthly budget does not include any line items for interior designers or a custom California Audio Technology system that creates immersive ambience as 3D carols fill the glittering corridors and drown out the ranting ghost of Kanye.
Me, I’m just glad I don’t have to decorate 17,000 trees. Or encounter martini-serving elves in the kitchen. Actually, scratch that last one. But for some of her fans, who are now in mortal combat with tariffs and inflation, Kimsmas 2025 doesn’t feel like the holiday spirit.
It feels like the double-K is rubbing Rudolph’s nose in their financial stress.
This might explain why some of them risked getting on Santa’s naughty list this week and decried Kimsmas 2025 as “obscene,” “tone-deaf,” “absolutely unnecessary,” “repulsive,” “tacky,” “greedy,” “heartless” and “out of touch.”
Kim Kardashian can’t see the forest for her lavish Christmas trees.
Now that her house is a forest she can’t see anything.
This is the danger for celebrities who overshare on social media. When you become so preposterously unrelatable, you run the risk of alienating normies.
Christmas is the season of giving — not the season of flaunting.
Society has always cleaved with haves and have-nots. But with each passing year, the have-too-muches are making a glitzy spectacle of themselves that amounts to a cultural eyesore.
Kim could have stiletto-stepped all the criticism this week by simply not sharing that video. Keep her over-the-top Christmas display private. Or send the video to family and friends. Don’t turn Baby Jesus into clickbait.
Did she not learn anything in 2016 after masked men dressed as cops stormed her Paris hotel room and robbed her of millions in jewelry? Is this why she failed her bar exam? Instead of studying, she was too busy planning Kimsmas 2025?
As she noted while marvelling at endless trees: “It’s pretty insane.”
Indeed. Merry Christmas, Kim Kardashian.
Please remember: it won’t be merry for many beyond Hidden Hills.
