About Christmas

[Rasputin]

Have you ever loved Christmas but you didn't know how to get ready for it? This is how.

Steps

Decorate your house. put up lots of lights and decorations.

Hang up lights inside your house and put up your Christmas tree.

Decorate your tree with ornaments, tinsel and lights.

Sing Christmas carols on Christmas Eve.

Go caroling.

Make Christmas cookies.

Get an advent calendar.


Tips

They sell advent calendars at most grocery stores. They are cardboard boxes with little windows that you open, 1 for every day of December, up to

Christmas. They have chocolates in each one.

Warnings

If you don't celebrate Christmas, don't read this.

Get an adult to help you with Christmas tree lights and baking cookies.
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Christmas has become a very commercial holiday. Rushing around to buy presents, people tend to forget the true meaning of Chistmas. Aside from big dinners and expensive gifts,there are other ways to celebrate that reflect the true meaning of the holiday.

Steps

Remember that we do not know when exactly Jesus was born, and are not commanded by God to celebrate Jesus' birthday. We are however, commanded to celebrate and remember his death during the Lord's Supper.

Reflect on the reason for Christmas by doing some research. In the Bible you can find the Christmas story in the book of Luke, Chapters 1 and 2.

Choose some activities that you and your friends or family will enjoy which fit with the meaning of Christmas and are also socially enjoyable. Consider preparing some special foods for the poor and needy, as well as giving gifts to people you know. Learn some of the non-commercialized Christmas songs.

Spend time with others to celebrate.

Spend time quietly being thankful for the gift of Jesus to the world that we celebrate on Christmas.



Tips

Remember your Christmas may not have white snow-topped trees, or a huge pile of presents, or a wonderful choir singing Christmas carols, but your

Christmas celebration and thankfulness is all that is required to properly celebrate. Anything more is a bonus.


Warnings

Avoid spending money you don't have to give gifts. Give within your means.

Avoid obeying the encouragement of retailers to make Christmas all about consumerism, as that is far from the meaning.

[Rasputin]

Want to know the best way to celebrate Christmas? Follow these steps and you'll have the best holiday ever.

Steps

Put a Christmas tree up and decorate it with lights and ornaments.

Plan a Christmas night with caroling, costumes and entertainment.

Make some decorations if you don't have any.

Play good music and encourage dancing.

Set up a table and provide food.

Buy presents.

Visit friends and family-make the most of this Christmas.

Make some treats-nothing is as yummy!

Watch as many holiday movies as possible.

Light a holiday candle-not only will it get you in the spirit, it can be a sort of rememberance for those people that you remember from past Christmases that are no longer with you.

Tips

Don't invite anyone you don't like.

Ask for permission first if the hosting place isn't 100% yours.

Never forget the real reason for Christmas-whatever that may be for you.


Warnings

Don't be a Scrooge. No one likes that.

Don't overdo it on the shopping. It's a great aspect of the holidays, but that's not what it's all about.

Take things one at a time-otherwise, you will go into Christmas relapse.

[Rasputin]

Allergy sufferers shouldn't be led to believe that they have to use a fake tree in the first place. Fake trees are bad for the environment, and you can live with a real one if you know how to take care of it.

Steps

Spray the tree down in the yard with a hose before putting up.
Let it dry completely before putting in the stand and bringing it indoors.


Tips

Many Christmas tree lots and farms around the country will have flocking services. It's more popular in some areas than others.

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Christmas is about caring and spending time with your family, right? Well, needy children usually don't have a caring family and home; so here's how to help make Christmas day great for that little boy or girl, just like when you were a child.

Steps

Decorate a Christmas tree with a family in need. If you don't know of anyone in your local area or street, you can find out who you might be able to help by visiting a local charity that works directly with needy people. Ask them to suggest a family and also ask them to arrange a meeting, so that you are not barging in on someone's life. Remember, everyone is sensitive to feeling like a charity recipient and you must respect their dignity.

Take the children out shopping to buy the children and their family a gift.

While doing that, teach them about how giving is more important than receiving. Don't overdo it though; their need is greater than yours. Let the children enjoy the occasion by seeing all the decorations, sensing the excitement in the atmosphere and soaking up the enjoyment of the season.

Take the children out to lunch and enjoy a lovely time before the big

Christmas day. This might be the same day that you take them shopping. Let them choose anything they'd like.

Spend time together. On Christmas Eve, sit down and watch holiday shows on TV or watch a DVD with the family. Or have them help you prepare for

Christmas by cooking, wrapping gifts, singing carols or reading stories about Christmas.

Share some of your Christmas Day with them. Perhaps spend time together on Christmas morning, opening presents with the children and having breakfast. Or choose dinner time to share with them. Alternatively, you could celebrate the whole day together.

Show the children they are loved!


Tips

Always show love and care, and the children will feel comfortable and happy.

Don't leave their parents out of it. Welcome them to share the festive spirit as well.


Warnings

Don't treat this like your charity project for the year. Keep in touch with the family afterwards and show a genuine in interest in how the children are going.

[abadani69]

Merry Christmas to everyone and happy new year to me

[Parinaz_M]

faghat norooz!!!!!!!!! lol j.k

it's too early to say marry christmas, vaghti moghash shod miyam migam

[mike435]

i think its is the nicest time of year i really like the cozy ness you feel every were you go

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

Each Christmas it seems we receive more and more beautiful greeting cards. We often place them on the mantelpiece to enjoy them. Soon the holiday is over. We take down the tree, clean up the clutter, and look wistfully at the lovely cards as we remove them one by one. Here is a beautiful project you can complete using some of those cards; you can use this card star to top your tree next year.

Steps

Start by printing out this pattern. Copy it onto your cards by cutting it out and tracing it. Then draw in the fold lines with a ruler.
Score each card along the fold lines to make it easier to fold. To score, just run one edge of a pair of scissors along the fold line using a ruler. You can use a pizza cutter instead if you have one handy. Be careful not to press too hard so that you do not cut through the paper.
Get ready to do the folding now. This would be a great time put on some music, and invite the family to help with the folding.
Cover the table. Use your favorite glue along each of the long flaps, to seal each point of the star. Make twenty of these.
Clear the table, and get ready to work on the next step. Print out this pattern, as you did in the first step.
Use heavy card stock or print your pattern onto regular paper and then paste the pattern onto a cereal box or other light cardboard. This will be the body of the star. Cut, score and once again fold along all the lines.

Glue together carefully.

Be careful as you glue the points onto the star.
Carefully wrap the star in tissue paper and place into a marked box. Next Christmas, unpack your treasure and use it to adorn your Christmas Tree.



Tips

This project works well in January when it's time to remove all the holiday decorations, and pack them up for the next year. It can also make a nice activity for a New Year's Eve celebrated quietly at home

[Rasputin]

[DokhtarIrooni]

vay man vaghti miram shahr koor misham enghadar cheragh meragh hast invar oonvar bekhatere christmas..

[Sepideh_UK]

are , but i soooooooo enjoy xmas.. cant w8..

[Rasputin]

[Sepideh_UK]

wow

that is so Intresting...

Thanx alot siamak agha.

[Rasputin]

In Memory of the Christmas Truce

For those who accept the Biblical tale, Christmas comes to put to rest life's deepest contradictions. Nowhere is the contrast greater than in wartime, when the December soldier is torn between killing and sharing blessings of Christmas. That became vivid in the war of the trenches a century ago.

The muddy dugouts were filled with men claiming Christian belief in parallel traditions of England and Germany. They knew each other in a personal way not possible today with silent killing from flying warships and craft that move under water. Back then, intimate sounds-- voices of the hunter and the hunted-- could be heard across the no-man's land between armies of World War I.

Never have war and religion shared a more mystical sound than on the rare Christmas Eve of 1914, when music brought a brief halt to terrible bloodletting on a field of France. Uncertain history overtook the storied Christmas truce, and later generations gave it the aura of legend. That changed late last November, just short of 91 Christmases later, when the last surviving British soldier from the night of the truce, Alfred Anderson, died in Scotland at 109.

Anderson, born June 25, 1896, was an 18-year old member of the Black Watch Regiment when he and other British soldiers left the protection of the trenches to walk into no-man's land on Christmas Eve. The 300-yard space between opposing trenches was for dead men only until that moment of the impromptu and improbable truce.

Anderson remembered that to meet, the British and Germans walked to the center of no-man's land, where bodies of soldiers from both sides had lain for weeks untouched. During the hours of strange battlefield quiet, graves were dug on the spot for dead kinsmen. But it was music, not a burial detail, that convinced warriors who had been intent on killing each other to clamber out of the trenches and greet each other-- for that brief moment-- as friends instead of enemies.

During a lull in the firing, Anderson and his fellows thought they heard music some described as "from the heavens." It was, some laughed, Christmas Eve, so maybe a delusion for those who hungered to be home instead of on a muddy battlefield. Then the sound grew distinct. It was from the German trenches, which in some narrow spots were only 50 yards away. In a tongue foreign to most Britishers, voices across the way sang "Stille Nacht, " a carol with German roots that was not yet generally familiar in England.

"When it ended," Anderson recalled, "there was a short time of silence. Then one of ours began singing `The First Noel.' Halfway through, it was as if our entire regiment was singing." When the British followed with "Oh, Come All Ye Faithful," German soldiers joined in with harmony of the Latin version, "Adeste Fideles."

Some courageous men from both sides chose to risk leaving protection of their mud bunkers to walk into no-man's land, trusting in the music and in the spirit of Christmas. "It was then we discovered," said Anderson, "that those on the `other' side were not the savage barbarians we'd been told. They were like us. Why were we led to believe otherwise?"

Commanders on both sides were dumbstruck by openness of the spontaneous truce. They feared it would cause soldiers to question why they were killing each other, and that such an "insanity" could spread the length of the 500-mile Western Front in France. It ended when they succeeded in getting no-man's land emptied. Then, on both sides, they ordered firing to resume without halt.

Anderson was wounded in 1916. He returned to England to live on and become Scotland's oldest man at his death, having lived in three successive centuries. A great grandchild enabled him to become part of five living generations-- a rare blessing for a survivor of a war that killed almost a full generation of English and German men.

Commanders saw to it there were no more truces during the final four years of World War I, making possible battles that took 10 million lives. To his final breath last November, Anderson lived with regret that leaders on both sides, in all years, have continued to subject their people to the terrible trial of war, sometimes even seeking it.

As he saw in the decades to follow, fathers continue to send sons-- now also daughters-- to fight to the death for various reasons. Sometimes there are no reasons, and the carols of Christmas sung during that truce in the trenches fade into an echo of legend.

[Rasputin]