CHRISTMASGIFTSANDCHRISTMASPAPER

Christmas gifts and Christmas paper, information and workshop.

Let’s learn about Christmas and make our own Christmas paper! Information and design workshop with the ethnographer Dagrún Jónsdóttir and the craftswoman and designer Ásgerður Heimisdóttir who teaches guests how to make Christmas paper.

The traditions and customs around Christmas have changed a lot from the settlement to the present day. In the workshop, we will especially look at Christmas gifts, which are of course the most exciting things about Christmas. In the heathen, feasts were held around Christmas, good food was eaten, and rulers sometimes gave presents to their families. In the second half of the 19th century, Christmas begins to take on the form we know today and Christmas trees and cookies pop up. Christmas presents also became common in homes, but before that people had rather given summer presents on the first day of summer. A few years later, the Santas also adopted better manners, stopped teasing and stealing, and even started giving children small gifts in their shoes. But how have Christmas gifts changed over time? What did children receive as a Christmas present 100 years ago and when did people start wrapping presents in Christmas paper? We are going to talk about all this and subsequently create our own Christmas paper with potato stamps and other exciting material.

The workshop is suitable for the whole family and it is ideal to make your own Christmas paper and learn about Christmas gifts through the ages at the same time.
The workshop is free and part of the project Við langeldinn / Við eldhúsborðið which is funded by the Icelandic Children’s Cultural Fund.

Remember infection control!