Special Christmas decorations outside or inside the house.

How do you decorate your house inside and outside? Do you for instance plait hearts or make other things in paper, yarn or another material? Please tell us about it!

[url=]Advent wreath[/url]
The Danes’ Christmas begins with the Advent wreath. The wreath has four candles, each of which is lit every one of the four Sundays leading up to Christmas Eve the 24th of December. Adventus is Latin and means come and it is of course the count down to what comes at Christmas, namely the birth of Jesus, which in this way is celebrated in virtually all Danish homes.
Traditionally the Advent wreath is made out of fine spruce twigs and cuttings, often decorated with red berries and spruce cones, white candles and red ribbons for attaching the wreath to the ceiling. Every Sunday a new candel is lit together with the one(s) already lit the previous Sunday. This means that alle four candles - each one obviously shorter than the other(s) - are burning all together on the forth Advent Sunday.

Nowadays you’ll find many inventive versions of the traditional wreath, using all kinds of material and decorated in more modern ways, including colored candles. That’s just fine but they can never replace the spruce original.

[url=]The calendar candle
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Another December tradition is the calender candle. This candle is, just like a tape measure, provided with 24 markings, normally decorated with motives of fir and little pixies with red cheeks, wearing red hats and dancing merrily in yellow clogs. In most families the candles are lit every day from December 1st as a soothing factor in a hectic period, quite often at the breakfast table. Frequently it is the childrens’ duty to blow out the candle before it burns down too far into the next date!

Also in the beginning of December the windows are lit up with candles and light chains and decorated with all kinds of red flowers. The obligational out door Christmas tree is lit with hundreds of white lightbulbs. Very often even the odd tree in the garden is lit up with small lightbulbs. People with no garden do a great job of decorating their balcony or just their window frames and sills.

As December wears on all families dress up the interior of their houses with glass globes, festoons, paper hearts and stars, cornets, music boxes and a lot of family artifacts that somehow have survived the passing on from parents to kids for many decades. Small Christmas decorations are produced in the evenings around the dinnertable. The ingredients are cones, moss, lichen, leaves and berries of all sorts and held together by a lump of clay on a plate. As always, there has to be a candle in the middle to make the atmosphere complete.

All nursery schools, elementary schools, colleges, hospitals and institutions contribute to this national effort of making Christmas in Denmark both profound, warm and beautiful for every citizen.

At the Copenhagen town square in front of the city hall the worlds biggest Christmas tree is erected and decorated with thousands of light bulbs each year. In 1999 the tree, which as usual was cut in Gribskov outside Hillerød i Northen Zealand, measured no less than 35 metres and with a perfectly symmetrical shape.

[url=]The Christmas tree
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Traditionally the Danish Christmas tree is the common spruce type, some call it the Norwegian spruce. In the old days, before central heating, this was fine. All homes were cold and moist and therefore perfectly suited to maintain the green neddles of the spruce.

Nowadays most people prefer the Normann spruce. It not only has softer needles, it also withstands the normal room temperature of modern homes much better. But beware: A true old fashioned Christmas enthusiast will scorn you for choosing anything but the common spruce. Even if it scatters needles all over your house and at New Years Eve looks rather poorly.

Families fortunate enough to live close to the woods try to pick and cut their own tree. Already when the fall sets in, the days shorten and the gales roam it’s time to choose the most beautiful tree of the forest. The ideal setting for any happy family is a weekend outing in mid December with daddy pulling the kids on the sledge with one hand, carrying the axe in the other, and mummy with the sandwiches and the thermo in the backpack - all on the lookout for that perfect tree. And you have to believe this: They always find it!

But of course, most Danes have to by their Christmas tree just around the corner.
All over the country special sites have been chosen for just this very important purpose, and in many places it is the Danish boyscouts who control the trade and thus are able to add some funding to their good deeds.

[url=]Decorating the christmas tree
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The most sacred Danish Christmas ritual concerns the lighting of the tree. You have to use real candles with real fire. No electricity, thank you. That’s how it all began, that’s how it’ll stay. Of course, a lot of people have treacherously swapped the candles with the much easier and not so dangerous light chains. They don’t drip, they don’t mess and they don’t put the house on fire. But, surely, they lack a bit of the original atmosphere. One thing is certain: If you chose to use light chains in stead of candles you have to use uncolored bulbs.

The tree itself is decorated with a silver or gold star on top (never an angel), festoons of national flags, cornets with fruit, candies or cookies, small toy music instruments and the entire tree often finished off with scatters of white fairy hair
or strips of tin foil. Especially the tin foil will reflect the flickereng light from the candles beautifully, whereas the tow creates a kind of fairytale illusion.

But the world famous Danish Design has advanced in this area too, and companies like for exampel Georg Jensen produces very elegant and expensive Christmas decorations every year, loved by collectors and connaisseurs all over the world.

Previously it was the father in the family who was in charge of lighting the Christmas tree. After dinner (and the washing up!) he would wander off by himself to the adjacent room with the tree and light up the candles. Then he would invite the rest of the family to solemnly join him and admire the wonderful sight.

Nowadays the children take part in all the sacred procedures. It is, comming to think of it, because of the children that Christmas still exists in the way it does, so why not let them be as active as possible? For the same reason, Christmas dinner is served quite early these days, often no later than six o’clock p.m. In this manner the real meaning of Christmas (the kids’ presents, that is) can be opened while the children are still on high notes.

In this new year i use all your techniques to make my home decent looking.....