Samichlaus and Christmas are up.

Switzerland has this tradition, whereas Samichlaus comes into parties that are held around the 6th of December and does ‘his thing’. Later, parties, drinking binges, food binges, Christmas parties and organized ‘fun’ seems to be the program everywhere well until the New Year starts. Should you go there? Should you participate? Let’s stop our trains of thoughts for a second and consider this.

Maybe you expect a rant and rave about these institutionalized parties here. But that’s not what this is. I should leave these decisions up to you, and I’m sure you’ll figure it out like you always do.

But I found that this time of the year is particularly enjoyable through the range of manual decorative work one can justify doing. As this time of the year is so heavily over-materialized, I find it important and refreshing to turn to cool stuff that’s not expensive, glorious or intimidating.

How to fold a paper snowflake

One particularly cool thing is to get a square piece of paper, fold it three times and then cut some bits out in order to obtain ‘snow flake’ like ornaments.

You can do this with coloured foil that reflects light, you can do it with simple plain white or blue paper – and it never fails to be fun. I’m sure you can follow my instructive diagram here without further comments. Just play around and see what you come up with.