Christmas is a borrowed tradition for our family – A tradition we have come to cherish over the years – the music, the decorations, the very joy all around, and of course, the way the kids faces light up on Christmas morning..This year, we bought our Christmas tree home a little earlier so we could enjoy the smell of pine and cherish the warmth of the season a bit longer. Decorations were hung up on the tree promptly and the kids did most of it this year proudly. I could not help but notice the similarities between the traditions of Christmas and Navratri. Buy a new decoration for the tree every year and buy a new doll for the Navratri kolu every year. This year, the new decorations for the tree were a set of fairy ornaments and for Kolu, a wizard set of dolls and a set of fairy garden dolls – all of these from Collections etc. Of course, buying a real tree every year for Christmas made me a little guilty about how green I was being when I preach to my family about not wasting resources and keep asking them not to use too much water or my kids to reuse paper as much as possible for their artwork. Doing a little googling on this has made me feel better – buying a real tree is the greener option. Of course, the greenest option is to have a live tree which you can plant or donate to someone who can plant it or decorate a tree outside if you have one in your yard though this is not so much fun as Santa might be confused when he comes in through the fire place and then finds out he has to leave the gifts outside and it might be raining..So real tree, we will see you again inside our home next year. Of course, I have to just make sure it is grown locally to be really green..
