Christmas Crafts

After finally convincing myself of the irrelevance of Christmas trees in December 2016, I threw away our old tree, except for two branches. These went into my centerpiece, a tall flower vase, in the living room. Old and dusty pink petals from silk flowers broke the monotony of green pine needles.

But habits and cravings die hard.

I’ve always been fascinated with crafts and love doing them. The Christmas season had been my time to indulge myself by creating thingies for my Christmas tree.

Since the tree had long gone into the garbage can, I carted the two tree branches left from the storage again, sat them inside my tall vase. This time I tackled origami, folding tiny paper butterflies to make  the tree branches look like they’ve been swarmed by these flying wonders of nature.

I also retrieved from a drawer the colorful turkey platter—since the turkey tradition is also gone for good—to the terrace to have a semblance of décor, which I didn't even attempt to have. In seconds, it was appropriated by our cat, Fiscal, who must have thought I brought it out especially for her.

Come to think of it, It seems like a cat, not a turkey, belongs there.

No tree, no turkey, no special décor. No distractions. Just a soundless time spent on crafts to soundly reflect on Christmas, the birth of Grace, as the Gift for all mankind.  

". . . when the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, subject to the law. God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that he could adopt us as his very own children."  (Galatians 4:4-5 NLT)