5 days ago was December 25th.
And that's Christmas Day which commences the 12 Days long Festive season of Christmas. Christmas brings in the festive mood, celebrations, fun, joy, happiness, prosperity, positive vibes & Secret Santa...
Today, Christmas is celebrated by entire world irrespective of religion.
Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ. Traditional stories say that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, a city located on Central Western Bank, Palestine, approximately 10 km south of Jerusalem.
When Mother Mary and Joseph arrived in the city, the inns were fully-occupied and had no room for them to live in. Hence, they were offered the place in a Barn (otherwise known as stable). Mary was pregnant with Jesus and was about to deliver her baby. Desperate due to the labour pains & no place elsewhere to go, they made a place for themselves in the barn, where there was straw to keep them warm. In fact, the first cradle of Jesus was a Manger i.e. a straw-filled trough usually used to feed animals. The Angels proclaimed the news of Jesus' birth to the shepherds who further disseminated the good news.
Christmas tree, Cake, Cookies and Decorations are the integral and worldwide favorite activities during Christmas.
Christmas cake is one of the great attractions and loved topic of Christmas. There are innumerable versions of Christmas cakes. Some recipes use eggs, some use wines and some are pure vegetarian & alcohol free. Our Aai (mom) also made Christmas Fruit Cake which had Dry fruits soaked in freshly made caramel syrup as the key ingredient. Also, we baked the Christmas Rawa Cake.
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Christmas Fruit Cake
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Christmas Rawa Cake
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Christmas Cookies are another delicious attraction of this festive season. Though we didn't bake any cookies, making delicious cookies is definitely amazing time in Christmas. People bake sugar cookies, gingersnap cookies, coconut cookies and many more types of cookies.
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Cookie Package
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Gingersnap Cookies
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Coconut Cookies
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Sugar Cookies
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Sugar Cookies
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Hot Cocoa Cookies
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Choco-Chip Cookies
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Baking Christmas special food is one side & Christmas Decorations is other side of Christmas coin.
Decorating Home, Offices, Streets, Public places etc & decorating the Christmas tree is also a fun & joyous activity of Christmas.
Decorations include lights, wreaths, bells, garlands, ornaments, candles, native sets, figurines, tree toppers, table cloths, table runners, centre pieces, stockings and much more.
It dramatically changes the look and feel of the place. Lets see some decorative items -
Traditional Christmas Wreaths :
Some Innovative Christmas Wreaths :
Garlands :
Garlands on staircase railings, fireplaces, tables, on walls, windows etc look superb. They create a festive, happy atmosphere with a nature's touch like wreaths do.
Christmas Ornament :
Christmas Lights :
Arranging them is sometimes tiresome & hectic. But, when the switch is turned ON, they light up the place, environment and our mind. String lights, Bulb lights, Rope lights, Fairy-shaped lights, Star-shaped lights, Tree-shaped lights, SnowFlake-shaped lights and innumerable types of lights are available today in the market. Lets see some pics...
And now comes the Christmas tree. Many houses, office premises, public places, churches have the Christmas trees decorated with lights, ornaments, snow-like cotton etc.....
We didn't have Christmas tree at our home this year, but, we definitely had one at my work place.
Actually, not one...there were two.
We had two Christmas trees in our office. The two departments on the same floor had different themes for the Christmas. Our department had the Light Sky Blue & White theme inspired by the animated movie "Frozen". We had Light Sky blue & White colour combination balloons. We hanged White SnowFlake cutouts & Bluestar made from sparkle or tinted plastic sheets. Blue stars had white curled ribbon hanging below it. It looked awesome.
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| The Theme For Christmas. |
Also, we had some fun games, a Christmas cake & Secret Santa.....
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The Christmas Tree
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Hanging Snow-flake cut-out.
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Hanging Blue Star - my favourite
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Blue Star with curled hanging ribbon.
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The Office Christmas Cake
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Set-up for some fun games.
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Our Secret Santa Gifts.....
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Now, our neighbouring department also had superb decorations....
They did the red & white coulour balloon decoration.
They had this Snow Man, a Christmas tree, a Native set showcasing the birth of Jesus in the barn & last but not the least an innovative idea of Santa Mailbox. These four things looked damn cute.
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Native Set Showcasing Jesus Birth Time.
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The Christmas Tree
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How could we forget ....The Snow Man
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Very Innovative.... The Santa Mail Box...…..
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Bottom line is that Christmas is all about being together, celebrating together. Be it the Christmas cake baking, be it the Cookie making, be it the decorations, lighting the place & the Christmas tree or be it in Secret Santa....the joy & happiness of being together is unique.
Hope you all liked this Christmas special article...…...🎉
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🎉Merry Christmas ...once again.🎉
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