Teaching Your Children the
True Meaning of Christmas

Nowadays, during the Christmas season we tend to get caught up in the rush of the Christmas season. Preparing and sending out Christmas cards, shopping and wrapping Christmas gifts all take up a lot of our time during the Christmas season.

In all of this preparation, we often forget to stop and think of the true meaning of Christmas and in doing so, we do often forget how important it is to teach our children that the Christmas holiday is not all about Santa Claus and his team of eight (or nine if you count good old Rudolph) reindeer delivering gifts and popping out of the family fireplace every year.

For those of the Christian faith, Christmas is a very special day of religious observation. While studies show these days that we may possibly be celebrating Christmas at the wrong time of the year, Christmas was first celebrated in remembrance of the birth of baby Jesus and the journey that the Virgin Mary and her husband Joseph made on a donkey to Bethlehem.

They were denied lodging at every inn, for many other people were in town for the same reason that Mary and Joseph were, so an official count could be made of all of the King's people. The family eventually settled into a manger, where the Mary gave birth to her son without the help of a physician.

A good way of teaching your children the Christmas story without making it a religious experience is to purchase the children's story version of the Christmas Story. Small, thin books can be purchased in any store, especially during the Christmas season. During the rest of the year, larger book store chains like Barnes and Noble, Borders, and B. Dalton will carry books like this, although you may have to search in a particular section.

The internet may also be a great resource for teaching your children the true meaning of Christmas. Northpolesantaclaus.com is a great web page for kids during Christmas time. It has a link for the kids to email Santa Claus if they so choose, and there are also web pages that they can go to learn about the ways that children in other countries celebrate their Christmas holiday, including the different versions of Santa Claus that they incorporate into their celebration.

Coloring books are sold during the Christmas season that tell the story of Mary and Joseph's journey on donkey back. Generic versions of these, in story book form, are sold at department stores and grocery markets all over. If you have a family Christian store or some other Christian bookstore, they will have the more biblicized versions of the Christmas Story in them. Coloring these pictures with crayons can give kids a visual idea of the story and what happened the night that Jesus Christ was born. This can also be a great lesson in reading for your younger children, as well.

How to Decorate Your Home for the Christmas Season

The Christmas season is the perfect time to hone your crafting and/or decorating skills. When it comes to decorations, the Christmas holiday will give you more flexibility with your decorations than Easter, Valentine's Day and Halloween combined.

Using a theme for your Christmas decorations can help keep your house from getting cluttered with decorations. Pick a certain theme for the house (or even each room of the home if you are feeling inventive) and decorate your home (or room) around that one central theme. This can help you to keep your focus, and sometimes it can even help to keep the costs of Christmas decorations down.

A popular theme for decorating your home for Christmas is Evergreen. Pine trees, pine boughs, and garlands made from pine boughs are all extremely popular forms of decorating for the Christmas season. Garlands are fairly inexpensive; they can be purchased from your local florist, a grocery store, or even made by yourself at home!

Many people may also use miniature versions of the classic Christmas tree to decorate their homes, and Christmas trees PERIOD are an excellent addition to your evergreen Christmas theme. You can buy small, artificial Christmas trees at just about any store , and they are easily decorated. In a child's room, decorate the tree with toy cars, crayons, Christmas lights, and other things that relate to children. This is also a great way to enhance the theme of the child's room.

Snowflakes are also a popular theme for Christmas decorations. Even for people who don't celebrate Christmas, the snowflake theme is an excellent way to decorate for the holiday season. If you have children in the home, you can have them cut out tin foil stars or icicles to keep them out of your hair while you wrap Christmas gifts or perform any other Christmas task that is necessary.

Of course, white and silver would be the main colors of your snow theme. Fake, spray-on snow (also called spackle) must be used with care in this situation. Spackle can be a very tricky (or tacky) substance, and it must be used sparingly.

Snowmen and Santa Claus are very important and often seen themes during the Christmas season. These items can be purchased at very good prices from a local five and dime or dollar store, or they are easily made at home. To enhance a Snowman theme, three different sized Styrofoam balls may be used to create your own DIY snowman, or you can use construction paper for a simpler effect.

The same goes with Santa Claus. Why not have a Santa Claus face on the door to greet your Christmas party guests? Be careful not to do overdo it with the Santa Claus theme. Different types and sizes of Santa Claus figures and dolls, of different nationalities and colors even, are available at stores. Try Wal-Mart, or a local 99 cent store. Specialty Christmas stores may also have the things you need to complete your Christmas theme.

Inexpensive Christmas Gifts

Christmas is a time of joy, piece, and giving. It is also a time of being broke. Adults often think that the idea of making Christmas gifts is only for children who do not yet have their own money to buy gifts. However, with a little bit of ingenuity, some clever shopping, and a fair amount of free time, you can make some very grown up do it yourself Christmas gifts. The first step is to spend an afternoon at a craft store, and see what sticks out at you as things you would be comfortable sitting down to work on. Some very basic, but very nice final product ideas include:

(1) Knit caps. If you have time to pick up crocheting or knitting, Christmas is a perfect time of year to put that talent to good use. You can make knit caps, mittens and scarves for men and women alike on your holiday shopping list. With all of the different available colors and textures in yarns today, it is virtually limitless what you can do to personalize a knitted gift. For some extra special fun, you can work in some fun beads fairly easily to jazz up a more basic design.
(2) Pick up some shadow box frames at the art store, and make some personal home decorations. For example, if you have someone on your list who is a big fan of Beethoven, you can create a shadowbox picture with some music notes in the background with a copy of a Beethoven songbook and maybe a dollhouse piano in the frame. Stuff like the dollhouse furniture as well as lots of great designs for backgrounds and the like can usually be found in the scrapbook section of your favorite craft store.
(3) Jewelry is a great personal do it yourself gift. There are all different skill levels for creating your own jewelry, and lots of different pieces that you can purchase to make your gift as professional looking and beautiful as you want. If you go to a good bead store, they will have lots of different settings on which to put earrings and a great selection of different and interesting beads for you to use. The best part though, is that they have expertise. With a little bit of help from the experts, you can make beautiful, one of a kind jewelry for less than a dollar a piece.
(4) Ornaments are a great way to celebrate the Christmas season. There are so many different ways to create your own unique ornaments, that you could make a different type of ornament for nearly everyone on your list. You could cross-stitch some ornaments, hand paint a box of regular glass ornaments, create egg shell ornaments with glitter or paint, make picture frame ornaments, bead Holiday shapes with pipe cleaners and pony beads, string some Hawaiian flowers for a funky tree garland, or just put a glittery hook on a plain ornament bulb. The best part about this gift is that you get to see it every year on your loved one's Christmas tree.

How to Host a Fabulous Christmas Party!

Hosting a party can be a big undertaking, especially during Christmas time, when there are a billion other things going on. Putting together a fabulous and fun Christmas party can be pulled off, however, and with style and on a budget. Here are the key ingredients:

(1) An empty Christmas tree with plenty of room for friends to spruce it up with their creations and personal gifts.
(2) Plenty of materials to make ornaments. Pipe cleaners, markers, Styrofoam shapes, stencils, paints, egg cartons, construction paper, scissors, glue sticks, old magazines, and anything else you can think of.
(3) Lots of ornament hooks. Otherwise, how will you hang the ornaments up?
(4) Wine, soda, and a delicious holiday punch. You can mix Hawaiian Punch with ginger ale and rum and mix in some rainbow sherbet for festive measure.
(5) Instead of regular plastic cups, opt for more colorful disposable tumblers. Get a lime green or bright purple, and match your napkins and plates to the color theme. Do not bother with prints. They are expensive and usually only come about eight to a package. Stick with a color theme that you love and work in shapes and colors that work with the theme.
(6) Make small diverse platters with cheese, meats and crackers as well as more finger food type sandwich stuff. Do not buy pre made platters. You can do a better job yourself, plus the stuff will be more fresh, hand picked, and more reasonably priced. That way no one gets stuck taking home the pimento loaf that no one else wanted to eat at the party.
(7) Invitations. Turn the back of the invitations into a space for your guests to brainstorm their ornament making ideas. Have them bring the invites with them and create their brainstorms for your tree.
(8) You may want to offer all the same supplies to everyone. For example, as each person comes in, give them a small bag with a certain amount of craft items in it, and each person has to use the same items to create their own unique design.
(9) Dress up clothing. Sure, arts and crafts are fun. However, they are way more fun when you are doing them in formal attire. The novelty of sitting around kindergarten style in cocktail dresses is an opportunity that no one should pass up. Make it a fun sort of dress up, maybe a seventies or fifties theme.
(10) Be a fabulous host/hostess. For better or for worse, you set the tone of your Christmas party. Make sure you do not take on so much that you are not having a good time. If you are not having fun, then what is the point of having a party in the first place? Make sure that you let people help with things like bringing drinks or helping you put together favors if need be. Most of all enjoy your party time. Keep your mood high, and everyone else will reach to stay up there with you.

Santa Claus

The conventional idea of Santa Claus is the symbol of the purity of the innocence and faith that children put in the Christmas season. He symbolizes hope, love, and in the present day, Jolly Old Saint Nick is portrayed as a happy, fat, old elf with glasses and rosy cheeks that delivers gifts to the children on the Nice side of the Naughty/Nice list on Christmas Eve.

Santa's wardrobe consists of mainly red suits with white trim, black boots, and red, white trimmed hats with a pompon on top. The modern day Santa Claus hates to shave, and his principal mode of transportation consists of a giant red sleigh and eight reindeer (one with a keenly red nose). He popped into and out of household chimneys, picking up scores of cookies and glasses of milk along the way.

However, Santa Claus has not always been portrayed like this. The present day idea of Santa and his many attributes can be traced back to a conglomeration of various tales and legends; the present-day Santa Claus is the end result of centuries of yarns starring kind old men and holy figures, all rolled into one.

One of the most popular explanations of how Santa Claus originated can be traced back to an old monk in Turkey named St. Nicholas. Saint Nicholas was famed for his kindness and generous nature; according to legend, the old monk gave away every material thing he owned so that he could spend his life traveling to help the poor and sick children of the world. At this point, I'm sure you have noticed that this version of Saint Nick didn't start out as part of anything having to do with the holiday season.

So how did St. Nicholas ever become associated with Christmas? Over the years as he became more and more renowned for his charitable work, St. Nicholas became known as the protector of children all over. The date of his death, December 6, was celebrated with a feast and was considered an extremely happy, lucky day. The Orthodox Catholic Church adopted Saint Nicholas as the patron saint of children and seafarers, and the 6th of December is his day.

The origin of Santa Claus can also be traced back to the Dutch legend of Sinter Klaas, who traveled the world on the eve of Saint Nicholas distributing toys and candy to the good children with Black Peter by his side, who carried a whip with which to punish nasty children.

Author Washington Irving first brought the Dutch version of Sinter Klaas to American attention in 1809 by giving account to the saint's journey on horseback on the eve of Saint Nicholas in his book, The History of New York. In 1823 the poem, "A Visit From Saint Nicholas" (also known as " 'Twas The Night Before Christmas") by Clemente Mark Moore was published, and served as the American public's first glimpse into the conventional present day idea of Santa Claus, chimneys, reindeer, cookies and all.