Christmas and the Tree of Life!

Christmas is about the spirit of joy, caring and sharing; carrying with it the message of love, hope and harmony. Celebrating Christmas with the children of Bala Mandir and seeing their faces light up when they decorated the Christmas tree with the team of volunteers from Cognizant, will always be etched in my memory.

A volunteer with Bala Mandir, then, it was interesting to engage with the children and teach them English through songs, carols, celebrations, and games. Christmas, for us, was the best time to cheerfully bond with the children. The celebrations would start from early December and we would play the Christmas carols on YouTube and let them sing along. The children would look forward to the Christmas celebrations with such excitement that it was infectious.

We would ask them to recollect visuals from the Christmas tree decorations in the videos we played for them. We would get answers in quick succession – ball, star, socks, cap, gift box, snow man… The creative children, would scream out objects from their imagination or from their wish list – butterfly, angel, fairy, Tom & Jerry, balloon, car, flower… Festivities and good food go together and so the foodies would come up with the idea of dangling  cut-outs of a cake or a chocolate on the tree. One child even wanted a slice of pizza (which, of course, we obliged to outline, lovingly).

The volunteers were indeed delighted to have such a long list of decorations for the Christmas tree in true Christmas fervour. Each volunteer drew an object and cut the outline on chart paper. The children grabbed the cut-outs that they liked, started colouring them with wax crayons and colour pencils. They would come running back with gleaming smiles and laughter in a great hurry, as they completed each drawing – for they knew these masterpieces would adorn the Christmas tree for nearly a year. To add to their joy, we would ask each child to write their names on the rear side so that they would leave behind an indelible mark on their creations!

Within an hour, the decorations were ready. Volunteers punched and tied little woollen strings to each creation. The children formed a line, and one after the other, hung out each of their creations on the tree, wherever they thought it looked nice. They wished their friends a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and even posed for some pictures!

The Christmas tree came to life in front of us with decorations in varied colours, shapes and sizes, with unbounded joy and happiness. Undoubtedly, these were the best Christmas celebrations for the children and all the volunteers, for 3 years in a row.

The Christmas tree was spectacular. Each branch had a hand-made decoration by children aged five to ten, with their autographs… To me personally, the tree represented the ‘Tree of Life’ created by the children of Bala Mandir, with the purest of hearts, soaking our souls with love and happiness!