This Sunday at Bright Blessing Michele Savage is continuing a tradition that has happened on and off for maybe 5 years in the Ogden Pagan Community. It is the Yule Ornament Making and Cookie Swap. This is a very fun activity that I look forward every Yuletide season. It gives me a quick break from the busy holiday season, and allows me time to hang out with my community, to catch up and to craft.
This crafting lets Pagans make their own ornaments and not just have to adopt ones that are traditionally Christmas related. We can incorporate Runes, Ogham, and Goddess symbols and can make pentacles, and brooms, We can include all sorts of natural ingredients, pine cones, seedpods, herbs and even do ornaments as spell crafts, to bring prosperity, protection, luck or love for the new year. We can also make Earth friendly recycling ornaments using things laying around the house, puzzle pieces, buttons, old bulbs, scratched burned cds to make ornaments. You get a chance to teach and be taught and at the end of the day we end up with a whole box of ornaments ready for our Yule tree and lots of good memories!
The cookie swap is also a fun part of the celebration, people get to share their Kitchen Witch skills, to brag about their cookie making abilities as well as taste others. They get a box of cookies to take home to their families and the recipes to boot! It may sound a bit dorky but it is so fun!
My advice if you would like to host a Ornament Making and Cookie Swap is to:
1. Host it early in the season, as we get closer to the holidays peoples calenders fill up rather fast
2. Announce it early, maybe as soon as the end of October so that people may have time to prepare.
3. Set an RSVP drop dead date, so people prepare enough materials but not too much.
4. Basically plan on this activity taking hours and plan accordingly.
5. You can center the crafting around a special day, the Full or New Moon or St. Nicolaus Day. You can have a visit from Befana for the kids, or host a ritual after wards. Just beware the crafting takes a lot out of people.
6. Inform people to make sure the crafting is not too complicated or takes too long. A thirty minute a person limit is a good guideline for time.
7. Make sure if you are allowing children to be there that people are aware and that they keep dangerous items out of their reach. Also make sure you have some crafts the kids can easily make. It may even be a good idea to host a certain block of time for kids crafts and a certain block for the more complicated adult crafts.
8. Host one at a spot with lost of space.
9. Prepare the space with tables, newspapers and dollar store vinyl table clothes that can be thrown away if they get too messy.
10. Make sure people bring a box for cookies and a box for ornaments unless you are planning on providing some. You may want to keep some on hand just in case people forgot.
11. Make it an potluck. Potato bars work rather well. Have the hosts provide the main ingredients, potatoes, and fixins and have others bring other potluck items that can sit. Things that can be served and kept cold work well, as well as things that can be kept in a crock pot. Finger food is also good, that way people can snack in between crafts. After hours of crafting people tend to become rather ravenous!
Here is the link to the crafting:
http://www.facebook.com/events/213221985419426/
And here is a copy of the email I use to explain what we are doing:
Yule Ornament Making , Cookie Swap
Crafting starts at 3 PM and goes until we are done and all ornaments have been presented
Feasting will be a potato bar and will be set up all day. The potato bar fixins will be provided by the hosts. We ask that everyone else bring a potluck item to share, soups, stews, chili in crockpots or foods that can be eaten cold and grabbed quickly are recommended.
For this event we will be participating in an ornament making and a cookie swap. Each participant is asked to RSVP no later than December 9th! The reason for this is because each participant is to teach us how to make an ornament and is to bring enough supplies that everyone can make one; this way people leave with many different kind of ornaments for their Yule tree. If your ornament needs to be made in many different stages, please tell me and we will schedule you as the first person to present.
Each person is also asked to make and bring their favorite cookie recipe, please bring enough so that one cookie or more it’s up to you can be given out to each participant. They are also asked to bring a copy of the recipe, printed on standard small sized index card. We will be making this into a booklet/ornament as well. Be creative, decorate this page as you see fit.
This activity is open to children, and participants are asked to consider this when they teach their crafts and to be mindful of any harmful objects; though this is primarily the parents responsibility. It is asked that anyone bringing children to please let us know and tell us how many and the ages of the children . This is so we can set up some easy crafts and activities for them to do during the day.
Hope to see you then!
Blessed Be!
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