Christmas lights

Just about all the malls are in full Christmas regalia now, but I haven't seen many homes in suburbia that have yet dusted off the deorations. For several years the good folk at Westlake in Halswell decorated their houses magically, until the hoons and vandals destroyed it for everybody. However, a private home at 370 Cashmere Rd, Christchurch, has opened up and for a small donation to a charity you can visit the owner's extensive Christmas display, mostly between the hours of 6-9pm over the next week or two. And Spreydon Baptist Church's wonderful Christmas Grotto opens again on 13 December - last year, 23,000 people went through. Meanwhile, if you'd like to try making something a little different in the Christmas lights line, here's some instructions on how to make a lighted Christmas ball.

An alternative to the consumer Christmas

Once upon a time, my wider family decided Christmas had become a competition, and we needed to downsize it. So at my sister's suggestion (and if you knew my sister, you'd understand why this was a bolt from the blue) we agreed to limit spending on a gift for any one person to $5, and that purchases from second-hand shops were fine. The idea was to be creative, not stingy. Everybody entered the spirit of the idea, and it really was exciting to see what people came up with.
If Christmas has become a consumer nightmare for you, here's another suggestion for getting off the treadmill (and the video is worth watching for its own sake - it's very clever).