Christmas 2013

It seems like it has been either a REALLY long time or it was just yesterday that Christmas happened.  I know I am still looking at a few Christmas decorations at home and feel like they will never be put away.  And I have to wait for the snow and ice to thaw before I can even think about taking the lights off of my house.  So in that sense, it is still ok to talk about Christmas.  Because, like it or not, we will be planning next year's celebration before we know it.

First, some background.  Christmas at Word of Peace is a beautiful time.  It is one of the two times a year that our gym we use for a worship space really looks like a sanctuary.  We decided this year we would focus more on Advent for the first couple of weeks and wait to truly "deck the halls" until the third week of Advent.  To read more about our Advent decorations check out the previous post.

When Christmas decorating time finally arrived we lined up our volunteers and called an All-hands meeting of the Worship and Visual Arts team to get the job done.

We began by keeping the birch trees as the backdrop behind the pine trees.  We recently built out the chancel (stage) area of the sanctuary so we felt we would still have enough space for everything.  And we did.

We added 6 pine trees of varying heights to the already 'well-forested' stage .  We had trees from 6 ft to 13 ft tall and different widths as well.  This gave a more natural looking forest feel than all the same sized trees would.  We also raised the shorter trees up on platforms and boxes so they weren't lost behind the altar.

All of our pine trees are fake.  But before you throw us out with the bath water, we made this decision a while back because we happened upon 4 fake trees at our church garage sale.  Every year since then we have been on the look out for more trees and now have 10 good ones.  This has saved us tons of money in the long run.  And people got used to the idea after they saw how great it looked.

The trees were lit with normal, end-of-the-season lights we found on sale the previous year.

We also have a very large manger scene we place stage right.  This was a big investment a few years after we moved into this new space.

Each year the congregation is invited to purchase poinsettias for the sanctuary.  This adds a wonderful amount of color.  We generally get about 60 - 70 to work with.

The final piece we added this year was a giant star that hung above the congregation.  One of our fantastic volunteers created this.  It was made from a very sheer gold material.  The star had 20 points and was held together with thick bailing wire and stiff plastic tubing.  We had the idea for it to glow or light up on the inside.  We got it to work with some trial and error.

We originally used marine lights that could be turned on remotely.  It was a good concept but we didn't get enough glow out of the three lights we had in the center.

We landed on a better idea (thank you Pinterest) to hopefully allow the star to glow: a Sparkle Ball!

Watch the demonstration:

I will tell you this, she has done this before...a lot.  And she has the right equipment.  It took us a few trips to find the right size cups and battery powered lights (thanks TruValue!) 

Once we got the hang of it we ended up with something close to what she created in the video.  Note:  Do not decide to do this for the first time the day before Christmas Eve, it makes life a little more stressful.  

Next year we plan to have an industrial stapler and maybe some hot glue handy as well.  We want to make more of these and even hang them outside. The type of stapler she has is called a Plier Style stapler.  It sells for around $25- 40 and is well worth it.

Christmas was a beautiful holiday and I hated having to take down the beautiful colors and trees.  But we were able to enjoy it for almost a full month.

That about covers the sanctuary interior decorations.  I will have one more short post about Christmas and lighting next week.  Till then...thanks for reading.