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Heading Out to Some Great Christmas Holiday Destinations

June 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment

For people who enjoy the usual traditional holiday or people who want something which is new and quite different this year, it isn’t compulsory that you spend this holiday at home.

Whether you enjoy a more traditional holiday, or are more apt to want to experience something completely new and different, you certainly don’t have to stay home. The holidays are a wonderful time for people to get away from all the hassle of the year. People get time off from work, children are out of school and there are very few professional as well as social commitments that are bound to keep you at home between Christmas as well as New Year’s Day. You should consider packing your bags and heading out on a Christmas Getaway.

If you don’t want to feel cheated out of your holidays, you should plan a holiday celebration which everyone is bound to enjoy. First of all you should sit down with your family and discuss the things that they feel will make holidays special. After this you should try and incorporate these traditions into your getaway as well. If you can’t think of Christmas without snow, then perhaps you should stay away from anything that has to do with beaches or the Caribbean. Holidays can be quite personal; most especially Christmas and most especially to children so make sure you don’t get your children disappointed along with your holiday plans.

If you live in a warm urban climate and you have always thought of celebrating a rustic Christmas, you should think of renting out a country cottage in place that is full of rustic Christmas festivities. You can enjoy the town Christmas tree lighting ceremony, ice skating at the local pond; visiting Santa’s cottage and having your family’s picture taken; or drinking hot chocolate near an open fire on Christmas Eve night.

If you are going away for the Christmas period, it doesn’t mean that you have to have a holiday which is filled with sightseeing as well as travel. It is a wonderful time for a person for a person to stick back, get up on their feet and enjoy a holiday that is filled with relaxation and good old fun.

When you are thinking of a place to go for your Christmas holiday, you should ask these essential questions:

-Is our family looking for a traditional holiday experience or something totally off the wall and unconventional?
-Are we looking for a warm weather or cold weather holiday getaway?
-Do we want to relax or be on-the-go?
-Will our getaway include our immediate family only, or extended family and friends?
-Are we interested in a down to earth holiday experience, or something that includes a more modern touch?
Once you have decided the sort of Christmas getaway that you’re looking for, the next thing is to think of how to get it. These are a few ideas that can be explored:
-If you’re looking for a traditional Christmas, consider a visit to New England, where the weather is often cold and snowy (great for skiing, ice skating and sledding), and the lifestyle is slower. If a hotel seems too impersonal, consider a bed and breakfast facility that features tree decorating, Christmas caroling and a formal Christmas Dinner.
Some other alternatives may include a visit to a visitor’s house which welcomes people into their home to enjoy the holidays. Some great places where you can have a traditional Christmas experience include: a Midwest farm;

Other options may include a visitor’s home that welcomes people over for the holidays; you can get these kinds of visitors homes in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania; or a more rural area of the Pacific Northwest.
People who require a more traditional Christmas getaway may prefer a European vacation; otherwise for the non conventional you can have a Caribbean cruise; a trip to Disney World in Florida or you can even take a train ride to the glaciers of Alaska.

With the different choices available each year, it doesn’t really matter where you decide to spend your Christmas holidays. The most important thing that you should remember is to incorporate the things that your family wants and what they need in order to make their Christmas one to remember that year.

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What You Should Know About Sending Christmas Cards

June 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The Christmas card industry is a big one. About 2 billion holiday cards are sent out on an annual basis every year in the United States alone, and this is only for Christmas. These cards will be sent out by a huge number of people and everyone from family, friends, and neighbors to work associates, clients and customers, will be caught in the holiday card frenzy regardless of whether they celebrate the season or not.

As with any type of correspondence however, certain etiquette rules apply when it comes to mailing out such winter greetings. These bits of advice should help along the way.

For Friends and Family:

If preprinted holiday cards are being used for both business and personal reasons it is important to sign your name right below the printed version then write a small handwritten note inside. This way you make the recipient feel that you thought of them personally during the holiday season.

When you are signing for the whole family you should start off with the name of the father, followed by the mother and then the children. You can simply write something like “James, Jane and Family.”

When a card is being sent to a couple and family that has two different last names, the card should always be addressed to both people. For example John Smith and Mary Jones, or the entire family as in Mary Jones, John Smith and Family, you should always include the children’s name as well inside the family cards.

For Business Associates:

Cards to business associates should always be mailed to the office or if you have met their spouse or them socially within the year, then you may address the card and have it sent to their home.

When sending a card to a married woman who uses her maiden name at work, always address the card to Mr. and Mrs. (using her married name), if she uses her husband’s name personally. If, however, she only uses her maiden name, it is acceptable to address the card to both using both recipients full names.

Business cards should always be written in a style which is much more formal and secular. Never sign your spouse’s name unless the recipient has met them in a social gathering. You should never send your personal family newsletter to business associates under any circumstances.

If you’re sending out hundreds of holiday cards to a number of business associates, then you shouldn’t use bulk mail. First class mail should always be used to send out this bulk mail.

Special Circumstances:

Each time you send out a holiday greeting, it usually means well. Unfortunately, good intentions are often misunderstood. In order to avoid etiquette slips, you should remember these important bits of advice:

When you are sending cards to someone that has a different ethnic or religious background from you, you should use a much more secular card which has no religious undertones. People who don’t celebrate the holidays at all, you may use a winter scene card which has a basic Season’s Greetings, Happy Holidays or message of Peace for the season.

When your recipients are grieving the loss of a loved one during the year, you should take particular care to find a card that deals with holiday grief. The extra thoughtfulness will be appreciated and you will have assured them that their loved one hasn’t been forgotten with this particular holiday season. When sending a card to a recent widow, you should always address her as “Mrs.”. This will make her feel a lot less alone.

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Hosting a Wonderful Holiday Party

June 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Holidays are a great time to gather together with friends and family members and enjoy each others company. It often seems like a great time to host a party but a number of things should be considered before all the invitations are handed out.

A lot of people are pre-occupied with work-related parties and activities for their children during December. If you have you mind set on a Christmas party, you should ensure that invitations are sent out early enough so that intending guests can take not of it on their schedules and make sure they keep that date free.

You may consider making the entire affair an informal afternoon one, especially in the case where you plan on inviting children. At such times it is usually easier for guests to come and children aren’t tired and cranky then.

If the event you are planning is a formal one without children, you should ensure that the guests are aware of this and they should be given ample time to get a babysitter. If your guests should decline your invitation, try to understand. Babysitters may be a tough and expensive affair especially with the rush of the holiday season.

As soon as you have figured out the style and nature of your party, you might want to start thinking of the type of food that you want to serve and the types of decorations you may want to use. Holiday parties tend to be a lot easier to plan as most people use the regular home decorations as part of the ambience of the party. Only some minor extra touches are required.

Depending on the nature of your party, you will have to decide on the type of affair you want. It may be a dinner which is formal and which guests are required to sit down at a table, otherwise it may be a buffet style meal where guests are allowed to wander from one place to the other and interact with different people. Both themes have their advantages and disadvantages but you might want to consider a number of things before choosing you meal style as well as food selections.

Sit-down dinners do appear more elegant and formal and they are a wonderful option for people who have children. This is because it allows everyone to sit at once at a table and have their meal without the associated risk of spills and a number of other food related accidents.

A buffet will often allow for a wider selection of food items.

Buffets can be set out for substantially longer periods of time and this will permit guests to go back to the food table over and again.
A sit-down dinner will allow your guests to sit, relax and enjoy each others company and conversation. A buffet entails juggling plates and drinks while moving from one room to the other.

People who want their bash to start and end at a specific time would prefer the sit-down dinner. The dinner starts off with the serving of individual courses as well as dessert, this in turn is followed by polite conversation and coffee which shows that the party is about to end.

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The Lure of Christmas Carols

June 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Christmas Carols are songs or hymns with lyrics about Christmas. They are usually sung in weeks before Christmas, as a way that the season can be celebrated.

The real traditional Christmas carols usually have a strong tune together with parts that are specific to a soloist. They also tend to be followed by a chorus which is usually meant for the group sort of singing. The unique musical sound is because most traditional carols are based on a more medieval chord pattern.

During the Reformation, the Holiday carols lost a lot of their popularity; however they were kept alive in the rural communities. In the 19th century they made a comeback as many popular composers of the day started to publish their work sometime around the 1800’s.

Holiday carols lost much of their popularity in the cities during the Reformation, but were kept alive in more rural communities until they made a comeback in the 19th century when many popular composers of the day began to publish their works around the mid-1800’s.

Christmas Carols tend to have a religious overtone to them and this is partly because that they are usually sung during religious services as well as ceremonies. Most modern day Carol versions tend to celebrate the feelings and traditions of the Christmas season without religious lyrics. It may seem ironic to some being that Christmas is usually seen as the celebration of Christ’s birth by Christians in the month of December.

Sometime around the late 1800’s, happy celebrants would take to the streets and sing carols from one door to the other. People would give them food, clothing and money for the needy during the Christmas holidays. At certain other times carolers would be rewarded with drink at one house or the other and this made their caroling all the more merrier as the evening progressed. Nowadays you have carolers singing at nursing homes as well as retirement communities and hospitals and helping homebound people enjoy the festive season.

By the year 1880, carols were sung during Christmas services in a number of different churches. This was sometime after Charles Fry had created the idea of playing carols using a brass band at the Salvation Army.

The etymology of the word carol is in the Latin word “carula”, carula means circular dance and this may shed some light on why some of the earlier carols of the 1600’s were written and played for dancing. The practice of dancing to carols was soon forgotten as most organists chose to play them in church instead.

With the understanding of the history of the Christmas carol more light can still be shed on some favorite holiday songs still in existence today:

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.

At the end of the English Civil War in the early 1700’s, most churches went back to singing hymns instead of carols. It was at this time that Charles Wesley wrote a poem called Hark! How All The Welkins Ring. This was later added to a serious tune and it later metamorphosed into the carol we now know today.

Silent Night.

Silent Night is undoubtedly one of the most popular Christmas carols of all time. The carol had its origins in Catholic Austria were there were no regulations governing hymns. The first English translation was printed in 1871 in a Methodist hymnal.

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