Christmas decorating ideas

Sharing some Christmas stories.........

My favorite time of the year is Christmas. I love decorating and hearing the carols on the radio. I love baking cookies and watching my kids' faces light up whenever a Christmas commercial comes on the television. I love buying and wrapping presents. One area in which I am always changing and being creative is in decorating. I used to do the same thing every single year until I finally got tired of looking at the same decor. I needed a change. Our house needed a Christmas makeover.

So, I began looking for some Christmas decorating ideas. I found Christmas decorating ideas in craft stores, regular stores and in magazines. I was amazed at how many new and creative ideas actually existed. I went to a local discount store and stocked up on garland and silk poinsettias. I also bought boxes and boxes of white lights to use as well. No matter what Christmas decorating ideas I came across, I could not let go of my passion for white lights.

I put all of the lighted candles in the bedroom windows with garland wrapped around the bases. I knew that it couldn't be seen from outside, but from inside it looked festive. In the Christmas decorating ideas that I had found, it had been suggested that ornaments be used for hanging in windows or scattered around the house. I hung some our traditional glittery ornaments from various places in the house and bought new ornaments for the tree. Some other Christmas decorating ideas involved silk flowers and beads. I strung red beads around the white strings of lights that were placed on the tree. The lights reflected in the tiny beads and made our otherwise dull tree look radiant. That was my favorite of all of the Christmas decorating ideas that I'd found. I wrapped some silk poinsettias around the garland in our foyer and hung some beads around the tall chandelier hanging in the lobby.

Some of the Christmas decorating ideas that I had come across suggested using a child's creativity to shine through. I handed my 7-year-old a pair of scissors and some white tissue paper and told her to make me some snowflakes. She did and glued glitter on them as well. When they were dry, she hung them on the windows and doors throughout our house. By this time, my Christmas decorating ideas were just flowing. I bought battery operated candles and set them on the bathroom shelves and scattered throughout the rest of my house.

Let your creative side come alive this holiday season and come up with some of your own Christmas decorating ideas. Get your family involved. Use some ideas from magazines or articles and find cheaper ways to decorate if you need to. No matter what your budget is, you can search for and create some beautiful Christmas decorating ideas.

THE CHRISTMAS TREE

Sharing a Christmas Story.....

Why do we decorate the Christmas tree? The habit is probably inherited from the Egyptians that used to decorate their houses with palm tree leaves in the day of the astrological winter. The practice was taken by the Romans that used instead of palm trees the conifers.

But the story actually begins around the 7th century when a monk from Devonshire came to Germany to teach the Word of the Lord. Legend says that he used the triangular form of the Christmas tree to symbolize religious meanings. In the Europe of the 12th century, on Christmas day, the Christmas tree was installed upside down, hanging down from the ceiling!

            It appears the tree was first decorated at Riga in 1510. At the beginning of the 16Ith century, M. Luther decorated the tree with candles to suggest to his children the sparklings of the stars in the sky.

At the middle of the 16th century, in Germany, appear the first markets specialized in selling presents for Christmas, usually food or objects of practical use.

Christmas decorations that were meant to suggest snow were invented in Germany in 1610. At that time not only they were silvery, but they were also made out of silver. There were designed machines to make thin silver strings for the tree. Silver lasted long, but it oxidized very quickly, so they tried to ally it with copper and zinc, but the product was so heavy that it just broke under the action of his own weight. So silver was used until the middle of the 20th century.

In Great Britain, the Christmas tree came along with merchants that originated from Germany and settled in England. Decorating the Christmas tree meant silver ornaments, candles and pearl-like ribbons all produced in Germany and Eastern Europe at the time. The custom said that every family member or invited person had to have a little tree placed on the table in front of him, with the presents besides it.

            In 1846, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert – both born in Germany - appear in "Illustrated London News", along with their children, all around the Christmas tree. The popularity of the royal family made this custom to spread fast among the people. The tree became a fashion matter not only in the Britain Islands but also on the eastern coast of America.

            Decorations were of an enormous variety. Mostly homemade because they were expensive at the time. Young ladies spent hours cutting paper snowflakes and stars, folding presents envelopes and paper supports for candy.

            In America, the Christmas tree appears around 1747, in German communities from Pennsylvania, but it spreads only along with the development of communications, in the middle of the 19th century.

            In 1882, the electric light bowl was invented and in 1892, it is adapted for the Christmas tree. And so, we get to our current tree that combines all the elements given above in the most ingenious and creative mixtures.

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