A fun way for a family to celebrate Christmas in a non-secular way is to make Christian symbol ornaments to hang on the family Christmas tree. The first Chrismons TM were developed by Frances Kipps Spencer in 1957 at the Ascension Lutheran Church in Danville, Virginia. This church owns a trademark on the word Chrismons TM.

As an Advent activity, the meanings of the various symbols could be discussed one each evening. There may be as many ways to make Chrismons TM as there are symbols to create. Most Chrismons TM are either gold or white or both gold and white. many include or are made out of beads. A Google search will bring up several websites to help you find the style that is right for you.

I use a small Christmas tree in my table display when I market my book, The First Christmas, so I recently made a small set of Chrismons TM using card stock paper. I first cut out my shapes using downloadable patterns which I reduced to an appropriate size for my small tree. Then I used a spray adhesive on a piece of paper where I could temporarily anchor the pieces while I painted them with white fingernail polish to stiffen them. The last coat was a clear polish with glitter in it. When all coats of polish were dry I turned the pieces over on the sticky paper and painted the back side. I pushed a needle with hand quilting thread through the top of each ornament to make a loop so I could hang it on my tree.

Today I made a few larger ornaments, and instead of using card stock paper, I made them from watercolor paper which is considerably thicker. This paper only needed one coat, so I used the glitter polish on them. I also cut them out after I painted them rather than before.

Here are a few links to websites with instructions for making Chrismons TM. They also tell something about the Christian meaning of the designs.

This is the one I used for my paper cutouts: http://www.whychristmas.com/customs/chrismons.shtml

Here is another: http://www.umcs.org/chrismons/patterns/

The Ascension Lutheran Church in Danville, Virginia offers several “how to” books on making Chrismons TM in a variety of ways at: http://www.chrismon.org/site/chrismon/booklist.php

Written by Janice D. Green, author of The First Christmas.

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