This year, don’t just spread goodwill toward men. With a few easy steps, you can also spread goodwill toward the earth and have a greener, more eco-friendly holiday. Here are some ideas.

If you’re planning to purchase a cut Christmas tree, consider getting a living tree instead. You can find live trees during the holidays at many nurseries. Then after Christmas, you can plant it in your tree or call a local school or the parks department to see if they’ll take it to replant.

For lighting the tree, be sure to decorate with LED Christmas tree lights that are now available at most retail stores. You can’t tell the difference in LED lights from traditional lights as far as looks go yet they are helping to conserve the earth’s energy by saving power.

You can also purchase LED light strings and lighted decorations for the outside of your home and your yard. Use an automatic timer to make sure your lights don’t go on before sunset and you don’t forget to turn them off.

To green your Christmas cards and letters, shop for recycled Christmas cards and use a Christmas letter template to create your own holidays at home on recycled paper that you can purchase from the local office store.

When it’s time to start your Christmas shopping, grab your reusable shopping bags along and leave the plastic ones at the store. Whenever possible, choose eco Christmas gifts by looking for locally made items or gifts made from recycled products or sustainable materials. If you’re buying toys or other electronics that require batteries, include rechargeable batteries and a charger to make it easy for your gift recipient to keep it charged in an eco-friendly way.

And remember that not every gift has to be purchased at the store. Some of the best gifts are homemade. Homemade gift baskets or gift jars make great gifts without contributing to landfill waste.

With these few simple steps, you can turn your white Christmas into a green one!

“Frosty the Snowman” is a popular song written by Walter “Jack” Rollins and Steve Nelson, and first recorded by Gene Autry and the Cass County Boys in 1950. It was written after the success of Autry’s recording of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” the previous year; Rollins and Nelson shipped the new song to Autry, who recorded “Frosty” in search of another seasonal hit. Like “Rudolph”, “Frosty” was subsequently adapted to other media including a popular television special. (Wikipedia)

Frosty the Snowman Lyrics
Frosty the snowman was a jolly happy soul,
With a corncob pipe and a button nose
And two eyes made out of coal.

Frosty the snowman is a fairy tale, they say,
He was made of snow but the children
Know how he came to life one day.

There must have been some magic in that
Old silk hat they found.
For when they placed it on his head
He began to dance around.

O, Frosty the snowman
Was alive as he could be,
And the children say he could laugh
And play just the same as you and me.

Thumpetty thump thump,
Thumpety thump thump,
Look at Frosty go.
Thumpetty thump thump,
Thumpety thump thump,
Over the hills of snow.

Frosty the snowman knew
The sun was hot that day,
So he said, “Let’s run and
We’ll have some fun
Now before I melt away.”

Down to the village,
With a broomstick in his hand,
Running here and there all
Around the square saying,
Catch me if you can.

He led them down the streets of town
Right to the traffic cop.
And he only paused a moment when
He heard him holler “Stop!”

For Frosty the snow man
Had to hurry on his way,
But he waved goodbye saying,
“Don’t you cry,
I’ll be back again some day.”

Thumpetty thump thump,
Thumpety thump thump,
Look at Frosty go.
Thumpetty thump thump,
Thumpety thump thump,
Over the hills of snow.

Baking cookies during the Christmas season can be a fun project for both kids and adults. Whether you’re baking for a Christmas cookie exchange, your kid’s classroom, gifts for family and friends, or just for sweets to enjoy yourself, these butter cookies will certainly be a hit.

Butter Cookie Christmas Cutouts
Ingredients
1 cup of butter
1 1/2 cups of sifted powdered sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon of vanilla
2 1/2 cups of sifted flour
1 teaspoon of cream of tartar
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1/4 teaspoon of salt

Directions
Cream butter, add sugar gradually and cream until fluffy. Add unbeaten egg and
vanilla; beat well. Sift together dry ingredients; blend into cream mixture. Chill dough
about an hour. Roll on well floured pastry board to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut with floured
cutter. Bake on an unbuttered cookie sheet for 6 minutes at 325 degrees.

Poinsettias are a flowering plant indigenous to southern Mexico and Central America, but they’ve become a common symbol of Christmas in America and around the world. How did this bright red plant become associated with the holidays?

According to Wikipedia, the plant’s association with Christmas began in Mexico in the 16th century, where legend tells of a young girl who was too poor to provide a gift for the celebration of Jesus’ birthday. The tale goes that the child was inspired by an angel to gather weeds from the roadside and place them in front of the church altar. Crimson “blossoms” sprouted from the weeds and became beautiful poinsettias.

Poinsettias, known as the Christmas Eve Flower (Flor de Buena Noche) in Mexico, slowly became associated with the celebration of Christ’s birth. The plant’s star-shaped leaf pattern is said to symbolize the Star of Bethlehem, and the red color represents the blood sacrifice through the crucifixion of Jesus. Franciscan friars in Mexico started including the plants in their Christmas celebrations in the 17th century, and the plants came to the United States in 1825.

They were introduced here by Joel Roberts Poinsett, an amateur botanist and the first United States Minister to Mexico, and that’s how the plants, whose scientific name is Euphorbia pulcherrima, came to be known as poinsettias.

Their rise in popularity in the United States and around the world was promoted by the Ecke family of California, which started selling the plants in the early 1900s and developed a way of grafting poinsettias to make a fuller, more compact plant. This secret allowed them to have a virtual monopoly on the poinsettia market until the 1990s. They also promoted the plants by sending free poinsettias to TV stations to display on air and by appearing on programs like The Tonight Show and Bob Hope’s Christmas specials.

Today the association between poinsettias and Christmas is well established and will undoubtedly be with us for a long time to come.

It’s been a holiday tradition to burn a Yule log even before there was a Christmas. It signifies that it is time for friends and family to gather near for songs, stories and fun, and until the Yule log burns out, there’s no more working.

In its beginnings, the Yule log was burned as a celebration of the winter solstice. Yule ran from several weeks before the winter solstice to a couple weeks after in Scandinavia, as this was the coldest and darkest time of the year. And though the Yule log is named from this Scandinavian tradition, the practice of burning a special log during the winter months was a tradition in many countries across the world.

When Pope Julius I decided to celebrate Christmas around the time of the Winter Solstice during the fourth century, the Yule log tradition continued, but the light from the burning log represented the light of the Savior instead of the light of the sun.

Traditionally on or about Christmas Eve, a big log was brought into the home or a larger gathering place. People would sing and tell stories while children danced and played. The log was even decorated, and food and wine were placed upon it as offerings. It was also a way of starting the New Year with a fresh start as a person’s mistakes and shortcomings were burned in the flame of the log. Songs were sung and stories told. Children danced. Offerings of food and wine and decorations were placed upon it. The log was never allowed to burn completely; leftover pieces of it were kept in the house to start next years log and also to bring good luck to the home. It was believed those pieces would protect the home from fire, lightning or other acts of nature. Ashes of the log would be placed in wells to keep the water good and spread at the roots of trees, vines and sprinkled upon gardens and crops to ensure a good harvest.

During the holidays, millions of families sit down to watch classic family holiday movies such as A Charlie Brown Christmas, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Frosty the Snowman and others that have become part of our popular culture. But what do you really know about these movies? Here is some fun trivia.

Remember the scene in How the Grinch Stole Christmas where the Whos hold hands in a circle and sing? The title of that song is “Fahoo Forays,” and if that doesn’t make any sense to you, it’s because the words are made up. Dr. Seuss invented some of the words of the song and tried to make them sound like classical Latin. Seuss was so successful that some people thought it was real Latin and wrote the studio to ask for a translation.

In A Year Without A Santa Claus, if you look closely when the little girl is writing the word Christmas with a crayon during the Blue Christmas song, you’ll notice that the letters seem to appear before she actually writes them.

The Grinch has blue eyes – but only after his heart grows while he’s standing on the top of Mt. Crumpet. Before that, his eyes are red.

June Foray, who was the voice of little Cindy Lou Who in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, was also the voice of the teacher in Frosty the Snowman and the drummer boy’s mother in The Little Drummer Boy.

In Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Hermey is the only elf who doesn’t have pointy ears.

- The only time Lucy ever calls Charlie Brown just “Charlie” in a Peanuts special is just before she discusses the commercialization of Christmas in A Charlie Brown Christmas. Thereafter, she always calls him Charlie Brown .