DECK THE HOLIDAY'S

 This comes from  www.marthastewart.com  .  Almost anyone will enjoy making and setting these out for the holidays. Create a Winter Wonderland in a Jar The shimmering magic of snowfall is always transfixing, whether it's outside your window or inside this classic toy. Homemade globes let you create a wintry scene straight out of your own imagination. Almost any jar works for this project: Baby-food, pimiento, and olive jars are good choices. Look for plastic or ceramic figurines (metal ones are prone to rust) at flea markets and hobby or model-railroad shops. Synthetic evergreen tips are available at many floral-supply stores. You will also need oil-based enamel paint, sandpaper, epoxy, distilled water, glitter, and glycerin (available at drugstores). Add Distilled Water and Glitter If the jar lids are not in seasonal colors already, paint them with oil-based enamel paint. Sand the inside of the lid until the surface is rough. With clear-dryin...

  Found this on  www.notmartha.org  .  These little houses have so many uses and can be given away as gifts or made for that  next Christmas party. Happy holidays!! I made tiny gingerbread houses that are meant to be perched on the edge of a mug of hot chocolate. I had been thinking about those  sugar cubes that hook on the rim of a teacup  earlier this month, and I was also thinking about  3-D cookies  and how they fit together and figured it would be pretty neat to make cookies that hang on the edge of a mug. I thought I was being  so brilliant  but it only took a few seconds to discover that a flat cookie on the edge of a mug has already  been   done . So I started wondering what else I could do. At the time I was making a bunch of gingerbread recipes trying to find one that would hold up for my  partridge in a pear tree cookie , so a gingerbread house was on my mind. I made a few v...

    Christmas is a Holy Christian observance that is often celebrated with imaginative, fanciful traditions from folklore and legend. Santa Claus is a legendary personality, similar to St. Nicholas, Father Christmas, Sinterklass, and Julenisse. Christkindl, representing the Christ Child, started bringing small gifts to children in Germany during the Protestant Reformation led by Martin Luther, St. Nicholas, Santa Claus and German Christkindl.     Christmas personalities are authority figures who bring gifts to good children. In some cultures the Santa Claus figure is feared because he knows all and sees all and may decide children are bad and leave nothing or something like a lump of coal.     As people move around the world, traditions mix and change with time. The United States is a melting pot of cultures with different traditions observed by the many ethnic groups in the country. Likewise, many cultures may adopt the tradi...

The Original Christmas Tree Ship     The story of the beginning of the Christmas Tree Ship is the story of the Schuenemann family, and most particularly the story of Capt Herman Schuenemann and his last ship, the Rouse Simmons. In approximately 1885 August and his brother Herman Schuenemann moved to Chicago to seek out their fortune. Chicago’s Harbor was one of the busiest in the world at this time with over 20,000 vessels entering and leaving annually. As competition was fierce, the brothers became excellent businessmen as well as sailors. Although they made a relatively good living, two-thirds of their annual income was generated between Thanksgiving and Christmas with the sale of trees. August had become a truly competitive trader and by 1895 had a well-established reputation as a Christmas tree merchant. In early November of 1898, August was in Sturgeon Bay looking for trees that he would bring to Chicago on a ship named the S. Thal. He purchased 3,...

   Christmas in the  Democratic Republic of the Congo  is more of a religious festival than being commercial. Most people won't have any presents.    Christmas Eve is very important with Churches having big musical evenings (most churches have at least 5 or 6 choirs) and a nativity play. These plays last a very long time. They start at the beginning of the evening with the creation and the Garden of Eden and end with the story of King Herod killing the baby boys.    People taking part in the play really like to show off their 'best' acting skills and tend to go over the top and  'ham it up'!  King Herod and the soldiers are often figures of fun (like pantomime 'baddies') and Mary is often well advanced in labour before she arrives!    The birth of Jesus is timed to happen as close to midnight as possible and after that come the shepherds, the wise men and the slaughter of the innocents. This means the play norm...