100 DECORATING IDEAS

inspired by... december.

i gave into christmas commercialisation & bought a christmas cd this evening. i cldn't help it. it was just too tempting!

meanwhile, & ironically, i am re-evaluating what christmas means to me. smwhere along the way, the excitement & spirit of the christmas season no longer gives the tingles it used to. perhaps as a kid, everything is new & bright lights in general are just attractive & happy. it was also school holidays & which kid isn't happy to be out of school? & now, while we get jaded with the mundane work life & the chore of buying obligatory presents, & the common reminder is that Christmas is a time for family & giving & love & kindness, i realised today tt, expecially for the christians, everyday should be like tt! so apart from the actual birth of Christ, what so special about the Christmas season? everything that we are excited abt is pagan - the lights, the tree, the fake snow (i mean for crying out loud, we're in singapore. winter is unheard of. also, the association of christmas & snow is also a matter of convenience since large countries are having winter at the end of the yr. it has nothing to do with the religions aspect of christmas at all), santa claus is a hoax (fine, st nicholas apparently existed, but the evolution of him is very deceptive), food, drink, parties, presents.... it's all commercialisation. even the religions aspect of it suddenly doesn't make sense. we are asked to reflect on our lives & prepare our souls for the birth of Jesus. to welcome him into this world & be joyful that He came to be one of us to save us. but we are also told to be always prepared for his coming for we never know when He will come again.

so if kindness & generosity & love & sacrifice are supposed to be part of daily life, what extra preparation is needed at advent for Christmas? what's so special about Christmas?

I like to put a little something together for my kids and the neighborhood kids every year to give them a chance to get together and celebrate. Cookie and gingerbread house decorating is always a fun activity. I like to cover the kids sized tables in colorful butcher paper because it makes everything else really pop. Candy always makes a fun and colorful tablescape so there isn't much work in the decoration department. Just a few fun glass jars to display it and you're done! I used sheetsof colorful scrapbook paper as the placemats for each kid adding another layer of color and fun. The gingerbread flavored sodas area fun touch to add to tables too.

Tammy Mitchell
Southern California
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