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Every once in a while we like to add a theme to our BlackBerry theme reviews. We did this for Halloween themes back in October, and now it’s time to do up another set of holiday themes for December. Looking around for these themes I found mostly Christmas themes, but I did come by one Hanukkah theme — and best of all, that one is free.

Happy Holidayz

Unsurprisingly, our two Christmas-based themes share a name. Even less surprising is that Cherri Chiodo created one of them. She makes frequent appearances in our theme reviews, and for good reason. She creates tons of different themes, and all of them add something to the aesthetic BlackBerry experience. We reviewed her Winter Wonderland theme in a previous edition, but this time we’re looking at a more holiday-centric theme.

Happy Holidayz features all of the Christmas season staples: a decorated tree, presents, a snowman, and a gingerbread man. The home screen is cluttered with trees and presents, but that’s just like my parents’ living room during Christmas season, so it’s not much of a complaint. Each icon is a gift, wrapped perfectly for your use. The applications menu also features gift-wrapped icons of different colors. Each is labeled, helping users navigate the theme with little confusion.

You can get the Happy Holidayz theme for $7.99. It is available on the following platforms:

8350i
8520
8900i
9000
9500
9630
9700

Warm Golden Festival of Lights

Even after going through all the spelling permutations of Hanukkah, I still couldn’t find many themes for BlackBerry. I’m sure someone could come up with a really sharp one compatible with newer BlackBerry models, and with Theme Studio now released we might see one by next year. This time around, however, I was only able to nail down one theme, and it’s only compatible with the 83xx series. It’s free, though, so that helps out a little.

Warm Golden Festival of Lights is a basic Zen theme. The home screen features just four icons running down the left side, though they are user customizable. That saves room for the graphic on the right, a menorah and Hebrew scroll. The Star of David rests prominently at the top center of the screen, surrounded by date and time, battery meter, network, signal strength, and message status. The theme is very simple, but very sharp as well. The icons on the applications menu rest above the graphics, so there is no issue of blending (something that’s a much bigger issue with older themes than newer ones).

Again, you can get the Festival of Lights theme for free. You can find it at cr8ive4u.com (you’ll have to scroll down a bit), and you can get the .zip here or download it OTA here.

Happy Holidays

Just one letter separates our first and last themes. While Cherri uses her typical style in Happy Holidayz, BlackBerry Theme Sales uses a much more traditional approach in their Happy Holidays theme. In fact, the difference in the themes is represented well in the titles. Cherri’s off-beat style fits with the Z, while the Happy Holidays theme is traditional, just as it’s spelled. There are some features you might like with this theme, too.

There are a few different versions of the Happy Holidays theme, depending on your platform. There’s a Today version with no icon dock, a Today Plus with an icon dock, and a Zen version with no Today. The applications menu is pretty standard, featuring boxed icons laid over the home screen background — a Christmas tree with gifts under it, plus a fireplace with stockings hanging from it. The only issue I see is that the icon boxes aren’t quite dark enough, so there’s some blending on the right side where the tree picture resides. I do love the picture, though — such a serene, all-American Christmas scene.

You can get the Happy Holidays theme for $5.99. It is available on the following platforms:

9700 Zen
9700 Today Plus
9700 Today
9630 Today
8900 Zen

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