Some Christmas decorating stories
Dec. 20th, 2007 03:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunrabThe Texas Department of Insurance had a door-decorating contest for Christmas for many years - decorate your office door, win a ribbon. As you know, being an atheist has never stopped me from enjoying lots of Christmas, and so I participated with vigor. One year, I covered my door with silver foil wrapping paper, then cut out a six-foot tall pine tree from green wrapping paper and pasted it on there - and then made a couple hundred origami stars, in many colors, and pasted them to the tree. It wasn't terribly fancy but it was lots of homemade, and I certainly got good at folding those stars. Made a big one for the top of the tree. Got an honorable mention.
Probably the funniest thing I ever did was rescue the covers of "annual statements" that were being disposed of. Insurance companies send in these huge (11 by 14, or larger, and about 130 pages) financial statements every year. They get kept in hard copy for a couple of years, then microfilmed, and then the hard copy gets destroyed. (This is the 80's and 90's - a lot of companies don't file hard copies any more in the 21st century, just electronic.) The covers are heavy paper stock, in different colors for different kinds of insurance companies - property/casualty companies have yellow covers, life insurance companies have blue covers, and there are peach and tan and green and pink... So, one year, I rescued all the covers, cut them into strips, and made a garland of paper circles, the kind we made out of construction paper as kids. And I strung that garland along the wall over the doors ALL THE WAY AROUND OUR FLOOR OF THE BUILDING. It didn't win any prizes, 'cause it didn't do much for any one door and didn't fit the categories, but I still think it should have won a recycling prize. That sucker had to be a couple hundred yards of garland. Needless to say, if I hadn't already had a solid reputation for being crazy, that garland would have cemented it.
You might think about doing that with some of your junk mail, if it comes in colorful envelopes!
Probably the funniest thing I ever did was rescue the covers of "annual statements" that were being disposed of. Insurance companies send in these huge (11 by 14, or larger, and about 130 pages) financial statements every year. They get kept in hard copy for a couple of years, then microfilmed, and then the hard copy gets destroyed. (This is the 80's and 90's - a lot of companies don't file hard copies any more in the 21st century, just electronic.) The covers are heavy paper stock, in different colors for different kinds of insurance companies - property/casualty companies have yellow covers, life insurance companies have blue covers, and there are peach and tan and green and pink... So, one year, I rescued all the covers, cut them into strips, and made a garland of paper circles, the kind we made out of construction paper as kids. And I strung that garland along the wall over the doors ALL THE WAY AROUND OUR FLOOR OF THE BUILDING. It didn't win any prizes, 'cause it didn't do much for any one door and didn't fit the categories, but I still think it should have won a recycling prize. That sucker had to be a couple hundred yards of garland. Needless to say, if I hadn't already had a solid reputation for being crazy, that garland would have cemented it.
You might think about doing that with some of your junk mail, if it comes in colorful envelopes!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-12-21 06:23 pm (UTC)I was the Christmas Decorations Enforcer at work this year. "We will put up the Christmas tree. This is the day we're doing it. Be there." Last year the tree never went up because we never got around to it.
You don't need to be Christian to enjoy the opportunity to decorate with glitter and twinkly lights, in my not so humble opinion.