Incorporating Valuable Materials into Your Christmas Celebration

Frankincense, Gold, and Myrr: Incorporating Valuable Materials into Your Christmas Celebration

Traditions evolve as time goes on. Christmas, in particular, is an excellent source of traditions from around the world and through time. For example, you can bring your tree inside like the Pagan’s did, hang your Italian-esque stockings over the fire, in which a French Yule log will be burning.

A lot of valuable traditions have been forgotten, however. If you are looking to bring back a few more traditional aspects of Christmas back to the holiday, read on to see how you can incorporate them into your celebrations.

• Games

Games are an essential part of Christmas celebrations and festivities. While they can also be a source of tension and drama, they can also be exciting! Classic card games like Gin Rummy or Blackjack can be played with pennies. There’s plenty of gem-themed slots at online casinos too, with games like Gem Burst and Cascading Cave offering you the chance to bring explicitly bring the theme of valuable materials into your Christmas celebrations. The accessible games mean that there isn’t much of a learning curve to enjoy them, and they’re super easy to set-up, as all you need is an internet browser or app and a suitable internet connection.

• Décor

Gold is one of the easiest elements to incorporate into your Christmas decorations. You can hang gold tinsel and baubles, wrap presents with gold, or decorate your dinner table with gold.

The Christmas tree as we know it today, wasn’t always the traditional fir or pine tree. People once brought branches of any evergreen tree they could find into their home as a means of praying for an easy winter.

You can take it a little further, by creating a simple decoration for over the dinner table or above a doorway by finding yourself a strong branch and stringing it up with glowing golden lights for a simple and traditional decoration with a modern twist.

Frankincense, as the latter half of the name would suggest, is mainly known for its scent. Its oil is commonly used in aromatherapy, as well as its benefits being used in soaps, lotions, and perfumes. It is known for its anti-aging benefits as well as its effect on wounds. But that’s not all, it can reduce arthritis, improves your gut function with anti-inflammatories and improves asthma.

Myrrh on the other hand, is a powerful antioxidant, and was used by the Ancient Egyptians to slow bacteria growth, which is an important thing to remember for Christmas 2021. But there is a reason the three wise men brought the two together: myrrh and frankincense used to be burned in combination in places of worship to combat airborne diseases and prompt the immune system.

It seems very apt then, given the situation we’re in then, to burn a little frankincense and myrrh oil with a candle where you can. You can also incorporate frankincense and myrrh with favours like oils, lotions, and soaps dotted around the house in shared and guest bathrooms.

• Food

No doubt you are already making preparations for your Christmas dinner as this is an important part of most families’ Christmas celebration. At least the wondering of what to make is taken care of: there will be turkey, potatoes in every form, gravy and a bunch of roast vegetables. Everything extra around it is up to you.

If you are looking for something a little extra, that still fits the traditions of Christmas, consider making real sugar plums. Cited in Clement Clarke Moore’s “T’was the Night Before Christmas”, visions of sugar plums danced in their heads, and they can be added to your Christmas dining table.

Traditionally they were once some kind of spicy seeds, like caraway seeds of cardamom pods, that were coated in sugar. Today there are recipes found online of dried fruit candies that are coated in sugar for a sweet treat.

If you are looking to incorporate gold into even your food, you will find a lot of use in edible gold leaf. It has been decorating wedding cakes for years now but would make a great addition to any Christmas putting or mince pies going around.

Another tradition that seems to have gone out, probably due to FDA approvals, is to hide a coin in your Christmas pudding. It was declared that the person with the coin in their slice would “lead the evening’s festivities”, which one might take to mean they are the life of the party – and it adds another sparkle of gold to the mix.

• Extra touches

There are loads of traditions that can’t be easily categorised, they seem too bizarre, but there is always method to the madness. For example, did you know that Santa’s outfit was originally green? If red doesn’t quite go with your chosen colour scheme maybe you can have Santa appear in his old green garb around the house.

Or you can bring back the 12 Days of Christmas. Once upon a time Christmas didn’t last from Halloween until January, but doesn’t a piece of chocolate cake feel so much better after a long session on the treadmill? Well, that was the original point of the 12 Days of Christmas. Something akin to Lent, the months leading up to Christmas were about abstaining from all the gluttonous things that make Christmas special until the big day – and then indulging on the twelfth night, which is the inspiration for Shakespeare’s famous play.

A lot of big Christmas traditions were brought into the mainstream by the Victorian’s such as the Christmas tree being popularised by a sketch of Queen Victoria with it in the background, and since the Victorian’s loved scary stories, perhaps look up some campfire stories to tell around the fireplace as part of your Christmas celebration.

Guest Article.