New Year C – New Year Decorations

What’s hanging on the New Year’s Fir?

The consumerism of the age we live in has brought a flood of decorations, symbols and objects of every kind that are used to decorate New Year’s Firs. We use them to arrange festive scenes and to signal our happiness at the end of the old year and the start of the new. If at first these trees were placed inside dwellings, it is now increasingly common to decorate trees in front of houses or in gardens.

Modern electronics offers a limitless variety of lighting options, including flashing reindeer, sleighs and figures such as the Coca-Cola Santa Claus or Dedek Mraz (Grandfather Frost). Increasingly, the real motivation behind these outdoor displays appears to be the desire to impress neighbours, passers-by, visitors and so on. Some people are enthusiastic about them, while others disapprove, and express their disapproval with cutting comments. Whether the reaction to all this glitter and dazzle is positive or negative, it appears to be the case that New Year’s celebrations have lost some of their nobility. This does not lie in decorations but in reflecting on the good things we have done in the past year and on where we are going to focus our creative and other efforts in the coming year.

Janez Bogataj