Making Christmas decorations

Tineke's birthday. A Dutch birthday event consists of sitting around in an ever-widening circle and talking nonsense while cups of coffee and cream cakes are thrust at one. All very nice but somewhat predictable, and unless one knows what people are talking about, or worse still, one has heard it all before, the birthday party is then either very confusing or extremely boring. Kids would not accept it, and thus kid's birthday parties are always full of exciting activities, trips to the Zoo or McDonald's.

Our lecturer shows the technique. Note the video surveillance in case anyone takes too many glass balls.

All credit to Tineke who organised a trip for the adults to break out of the cake-and-coffee circle of death. The Dutch spend lots of hours around this time making decorations for the Christmas table. They usually consist of few bits of evergreen, 3 pine cones, some glass balls, a lot of moss and a beer glass with a candle in it. All fiished off with a squirt of artificial snow.

The students take note

Tineke booked us all into a christmas -table-decoration making workshop. With lunch. We all arrived at a huge farmhouse that has been converted to a culture thingy shop and christmas decorations paradise. Even the trees outside had all been sprayed silver. Inside was a hampton court maze to ensure that customers were confronted with 14 kilometers of display shelving packed with every cultural knick-knack that man could possibly concieve, while moving in space a distance of  13 meters from the carpark to the reception desk as the crow flies.

As beginners, we would all be making the same decoration, a hardboard star with a beer glass glued to it. We would learn how to pad it all up with bubble plastic, apply moss, twigs, little glass balls and pine cones. Everything was most carefull regulated. Lists told us that we were allowed 3 large glass balls, 6 medium and 12 small ones. Since all the medium balls were all used up by the previous group, we were allowed to swap our allocation of medium balls for large or small at a very reasonable rate of exchange. We looked with envy at the little tigers and elephants which we would not be able to use at our price level. .

Can someone help me unglue my fingers?

Mossy things were attached with wire, smaller objects with glue from a glue gun, a device that either failed to apply enough glue, or hosed the walls with it if you pressed too hard.

                                                  Julius is trading sand for large glass balls

Everyone ended up with a reasonably cultural object to enhance the Christmas Blowout, but I fear that lighting a candle could be quite an inferno with all that incendiary moss, pinecones and the explosive glue. And then the glass balls exploding with the heat and showering diners with glittering shrapnel.

Lunch and off home with pride our magnificent Christmas table enhancments. A most enjoyable day.

Thanks Tineke.