One Christmas decoration you might find in a Christian home is an advent wreath– a circular candle holder featuring three purple candles and a pink candle, with a large white candle in the center. The Christmas Traditions blog is exploring this ancient holiday tradition and offering tips to help you celebrate the season of Advent in your own home this Christmas.
Retailers struggling to market in an economy where people have greatly reduced their spending on “non-essentials” are changing up their Christmas strategy this year, according to an article from the Associated Press. Rather than focusing on trends like upside-down Christmas trees and peacock-themed holiday decorations, Christmas decorations are now returning to familiar traditions — red, green, and gold, plaid, Santa and angels, evergreen artificial Christmas trees, and the importance of family in your Christmas celebration — because they are comfortable and familiar in an unstable time. What do you think? Will you be using more traditional decorations instead of buying into trends? Reusing more old decorations? Choosing to stay at home and spend time with your family instead of paying to engage in holiday festivals?
Your Christmas tree is the focal point of your home during the holiday season. Prominently displayed in the living room, foyer, or family room, it’s a centerpiece that showcases all of your favorite ornaments and stands watch over your family’s gift bounty. But before you start decorating your Christmas tree this year, you’ll want to make sure you’ve got the basics down. The Christmas Tree Decorating blog has some tips and pointers this week to help you make sure your tree is as beautiful as it can possibly be.
It can be hard to avoid the urge to buy new Christmas ornaments each year, as department and discount stores put out display after display of shiny, new, and trendy holiday décor. It’s difficult to get excited about putting out that same set of ornaments year after year, when there are all of these great new things to be bought. But if you do give in to the shopping urge, then you have the problem of deciding what to do with your old ornaments.
If you really don’t want them anymore, you could donate the ornaments to a charity thrift store like Goodwill or the Salvation Army Thrift Store, or gather them all up, price them, and hold a holiday yard sale. Online classifieds or newspaper classifieds might be a good place to sell old ornaments too, if they’re something that someone else would want to buy.
Or, if they’re sentimental and you don’t want to get rid of them, you can use them elsewhere in your home. One idea is to decorate your main tree or the main room in your home with all of your new decorations, and use the old ones elsewhere. Have a smaller Christmas tree in another room of your home to display on a dresser or end table, and put old ornaments on it, so they don’t go totally forgotten. If they’re small and you have room in a curio cabinet, you could also display them there, using ornament stands.
No room for a new Christmas tree? You could also pass them on to another family member who would appreciate their sentimental value just as much and will love having something new to add to their home. If you have a decoration you inherited from you grandmother, giving it to your own child or grandchild is a great option for ensuring that the decoration will continue to be loved and appreciated, because it’s a part of family history.
The entryway of your home is the first thing your guests see when they come to visit you for the holidays, so it needs to be welcoming and festive. This video provides some useful tips on creating a warm and inviting entryway that gets your guests into the holiday spirit before they even come inside.
The smells that are in and around your home at Christmas time are every bit as important as your visual décor. There are certain smells that just remind us of Christmas, like evergreen scents, cinnamon, hot chocolate, and the smell of baking cookies. You can find scented candles featuring most of these smells now, but having to smell baking cookies without actually getting to enjoy the cookies? Torture, pure torture! So let’s just bake some cookies and get that delicious scent going. Christmas Goodies has a tasty cookie recipe to share for an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie.
Turning your home into a “winter wonderland” can cost a lot of cash if you buy a lot of new decorations each year. And that’s exactly what retailers want you to do. But you don’t have to buy new things to bring your décor up to date. Our friends at the Christmas Places blog have some tips and suggestions to help you keep your Christmas décor updated without spending a lot of cash.
You don’t have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to have beautiful and unique centerpieces for Christmas if you’re willing to put in a little effort. This video from the 700 Club employs a little creativity to design beautiful Christmas decorations, all for $25 or less, and all are easy to create.
Personalized ornaments are another great way to start a family Christmas ornament tradition. When you buy a personalized Christmas ornament, any ornament you choose will be unique because it is customized with the year, the name of the family member it is being presented to, and a special holiday message. Best of all, you can find personalized Christmas ornaments to fit any occasion or interest, so you’re always sure to find the perfect ornament.
You can also remember Christmases past with personalized family ornaments, which are specifically designed to represent each member of a family. Family ornaments are available for families of two all the way up to families of 9, 10, or even more than that! In these ornaments, a whimsical character usually represents each family member and is labeled with his or her name. A last name or a holiday greeting can be included on other areas of the ornament, along with the year.
Personalized family ornaments create Christmas memories because they immortalize each year in the progression of your family. New additions to the family will be reflected on that year’s ornament. And as you hang each ornament on the Christmas tree, year after year, you will be reminded of warm memories of holidays gone by.
A third way to create a unique Christmas ornament tradition is to make your own Christmas ornaments. Set aside one night during the holidays to sit down together as a family and create ornaments of your very own. You can find a wealth of easy Christmas ornament craft patterns online. This way, each person will be able to create his or her own custom Christmas ornament while simultaneously crafting holiday memories of your own family Christmas tradition.
Each Christmas, families partake in a variety of different Christmas traditions that have been passed on from generation to generation. Some make traditional family recipes, while others incorporate special decorations that once belonged to close relatives. Decorating the tree provides an extraordinary opportunity to integrate old family traditions while creating new ones as your own, smaller family unit.
Christmas tree ornaments can be much more than just trinkets you hang on an evergreen tree in your living room-they can represent cherished memories of holidays spent together as a family. Ornaments passed on from one family member to another no doubt remind us of that special person each year when we hang that ornament on the Christmas tree. You can stir the same feelings and memories in your family year after year by starting your own family Christmas ornament traditions.
One way to start an ornament tradition is to buy each member of your family a unique ornament each Christmas. This ornament can reflect their interests or just something you think is special about them. Each year when you take down your Christmas decorations, maintain a separate box for each person’s annual Christmas ornaments so that you can all reminisce, year by year, as you hang them on the tree again the following year.
This particular Christmas ornament tradition is great if you have kids, because when your children move out on their own, they will already have their own small collection of Christmas ornaments. Some parents buy two of each ornament they purchase for their children, so that when they pass the ornaments on to their grown child, they will have a second, identical set to continue hanging on their own tree.
Come back in a few days for even more ideas for creating Christmas ornament traditions for your family.