You're right, but we certainly still had these foil-type decorations up in 1998 :) I remember them through every Christmas of my childhood, and once I grew big enough to help I'd climb on the back of the sofa on my tippy-toes and push a garland onto the ceiling with a blob of blu-tack.

After Christmas they'd go back in the attic in a sturdy but battered red-and-white printed cardboard box claiming to contain Finest Russian Vodka - which itself felt as much part of the Christmas traditions as those garlands did.

The garlands are gone now, I believe, but that box still exists.