Home Decorations for Christmas

Dear Readers,

We hope that you are enjoying a day as beautiful as the one outside our door, full of sunshine and fresh air!

Here is a little article for you to enjoy, from Modern Priscilla Magazine, December 1922, entitled "Home Decorations for Christmas":

"Christmas and Easter are the two most precious festivals of the Christian year. Each is a time of surpassing joy, but the happiness is of a quality too great for cheapness, too high to be tarnished with any triviality. recognition of its beauty sets the note for the celebration of Christmas and all decoration in honor of the season.

That Christmas is a generous day, a day to commemorate with giving, we also recognize. It is fitting that our decorations themselves be, in a sense, a gift. We want to gladden the passer-by with Christmas cheer and we therefore commence to decorate our houses at the front door. If the entrance is a colonial type , laurel wound around the columns, connected by festoons to a wreath, makes the most effective treatment. If there is no porch, a wreath fastened to the door with a big bow of crimson ribbon is the usual treatment. Add to this a wreath at each window and the house is beautifully dressed.


If we are near enough to woods and fields to get Christmas greens, the decoration provides pleasure beforehand in family excursions to gather materials and for happy evenings fashioning them for use.

Keep all greens out-of-doors in the cold until they are fastened up in their final position. The dry heat of the house withers them rapidly (Ed note: misting them frequently with a spray bottle helps.).

Making wreaths is a simple task. For a foundation, heavy wire or willow twigs may be used. Sprigs are bound on with string so that the wreath looks equally well on both sides. Laurel makes the best wreaths. Hemlock is beautiful but it scatters badly when dried and makes hard work for the homemaker. Balsam is excellent material and pine, with a few cones, is perhaps best, next to laurel. Each cone should be wound at the base with fine wire and enough wire left to make a stem easily fastened to the foundation circle of the wreath. Another pretty addition is made of bunches of "everlasting" dipped in red ink.

In winding a wreath do not use too long a string. It saves time to use short lengths and tie them together.

Alum solution will coat greens with mock snow which sparkles merrily in the light of the Christmas lamps.

Lovely Christmas bouquets may be made of evergreen sprays, pine cones, and branches of colored "everlasting". A basket made of six-inch twigs, tacked together log-cabin fashion, and filled with dried moss, makes an excellent holder for such a bouquet. Wind florists' wire around each piece, or group of pieces, and stick the wire into the moss.

For the Christmas tree, in addition to the ornaments we buy, there are lovely home-made trimmings which add much to its meaning and charm. These may be prepared by the children.

Hang a polished red apple for each person o the tree with bright ribbon. Each person, too, should have a stocking, made of tartelan, filled with homemade candy. White tartelan is the best to use for the stockings. Sew the two pieces together with scarlet worsted.

Other things for the tree are paper cornucopias. Use two thickness of paper for these. The outside piece should be a square,the inside one an oblong the same width as the outside square, but twice the length. Place one end of the oblong on one side of the square, shape the cornucopia, and fasten the side. This will leave the inner piece projecting to fold over generously after the cornucopia is filled. They look most attractive when the inside paper is white and the outside gaily colored. Salted nuts are about the best thing to put in these cornucopias.

Gilded nuts and strings of popcorn with a cranberry every few inches are time-honored features of the tree that nobody forgets. Surprise nuts, two empty half-shells glued together over a poem or tiny favor are most enjoyed.

Cookies cut in quaint shapes, suspended by ribbon, complete the perfect tree.

For lights safety dictates tiny electric bulbs in place of candles.

Keep all the tree ornaments, which are not perishable, in a plainly labeled box until the next season's use. By keeping over what we have and adding a few every year, a gorgeous tree soon blooms at Christmastide and we save money to give to those whose Christmas days are less gay and joyous than ours."


Blessings to you,

Marqueta

"If any little word of ours
Can make one life the brighter;
If any little song of ours
Can make one heart the lighter;
God help us speak the little word,
And take our bit of singing
And drop it in some lonely vale
To set the echoes ringing.

It any little love of ours
Can make one life the sweeter;
If any little care of ours
Can make one step the fleeter;
If any little help may ease
The burdens of another;
God, give us love and care and strength
To help along each other.

If any little thought of ours
Can make one life the stronger;
If any cheery smile of ours
Can make its brightness longer;
Then let us speak that thought today.
With tender eyes aglowing,
So God may grant some weary one
Shall reap from our glad sowing."

~Anonymous