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Brownstone Heas hand-pai If you%u2019re 1BY BETSY KISSAMIf you like it and can attach it to your Christmas tree, than it's a Christmas tree ornament. Just about anything else goes these days from cut-out paper and stuffed cloth shapes, toys, dried flowers, baked goods and fruit to ordinary cookie cutters.It may be nostalgia or it may be the still-burgeoning interest in crafts and making things by hand, but whatever the reason, more and more Christmas trees are being filled with unusual and handmade items. That Victorian cluttered look is back. No longer are the standard red. green, blue, gold and silver balls of a decade ago being neatly and often sparsely arranged; today, ornament after different ornament, anything that will hang, fills just about every bough and sits in every crevice.VICTORIAN CHRISTMAS TREESChristmas trees in 19th Century America were decorated with apples. lemons, strings of raisins or nuts, gingerbread ornaments cut into star, bell, heart, wreath, or any shape, small toys, baskets filled with candy or nuts, and cloth pieces cut into designs. Whatever was on hand and festive was added.Today lots more readymade items are available to the homemaker than in the 1800's but perhaps because of cost or boredom with a tree that looks like evervbodv elses, Christmas treesare once again being decorated piecemeal with something from here and something from there that reflects the individuality of the decorator.COOKIES AS ORNAMENTATIONAt 70 Seventh Avenue, One Smart Cookie w ill soon be making its famous Christmas cookies, which when hung on a Christmas tree make delicious eating as well as attractive ornamentation; or the cookies can be polyurethaned rendering them inedible but surprisingly permanent. Stars, bells, reindeer, wreathes, trees and Santas are cut from a butter cookie dough and decorated with colored sugars, metallic balls, frostings, or chocolate sprinkles (45 cents to 60 cents per cookie; or $1.25 for a quarter pound).If you prefer to make your own, any cookbook has a butter cookie recipe. Or if you just want decorations that are not edible, the following recipe for play dough allows you to form any shape. Take 2 cups flour, add 3/4 cup salt and 1 teaspoon oil; slowly add slightly less than 3/4 cup water to which your choice of food coloring has been blended. Mix with a fork and then work by hand. Bake completed shapes in 350 degree oven for approximately 20 minutes for an ornament that is roughly 1/2 inch thick.Wires to hang the pieces can be added before baking, or a hole canbe make with a toothpick when the dough is wet (hole should be larger than desired as dough will swell slightly during baking). After baking these ornaments may be painted with acrylics and finished with ployurethane (found in any hardware store) or with polymer acrylic, matte finish (from an art supply store). Polymer acrylic can be painted on with a hard bristle brush and is, especially for children, easier to work with than polyurethane, although the finish is not quite so hard.DRIED FLOWERS Dried flowers add natural color to a tree. Growing Things at 81A Seventh Avenue sells bunches of purple, white, or raspberry statice, pinkish heather, white baby%u2019s breath, or tea tree with reddish flowers for $2.50 a bunch from which can be made 3 to 5 fairly large clusters of flowers. Tie these with ribbon and hang or place them the tree. Another idea fromonA Christmas tree decorated with handmade ornaments at the Fabric Alternative.(Feldman Photo)Growing Things uses clay pots, the smaller the better. Thread ribbon through the drainage hole, knot or attach the ribbon to a stick to hold it in place, and hand the pot upside down as a bell.Besides plants and flowers. Growing Things carries many unusual ornaments from sparkling Austrian Crystals (from $1.25 to $20) to rainbows, birds, stars, bells, and hearts in brass, wood, glass, satins, and cottons, as wellAvenue is %u00a3 and raccooi Raggedy At and clip-on i rumored to although no ornaments, to a tree, tricycle ($1 doll house n as an ornat Fabulous ($3.50) dres priests, nu characters, stars, and flavor. The selection of mas tree o pops and 1 $5), porce %u201c Alice in painted an ornaments and more.RIBBH Fabric A! tic Avenue Christmas t (approxima cents a pie; or calico p small poue) hung on ;t additions c: ri, or nutsBY LINUS GELBERThe long-overdue cold won't be the only thing dropping widearmed over New York in the next week or so. Traditional tree-lightings have already heralded the pending arrival of Santa Claus and the traditional turkey repast is no more, by now, than a recollection. The newest wave is going to be of latkes, dreidels. menorahs and chanukah candles, as time grows quickly short twixt here and the Festival of Lights.Chanukah comes around this year on the week beginning with December 15. %u201c We%u2019re just beginning to get into our Chanukah pitch,%u201d says Rabbi Gerald Weider of the Garfield Temple, Congregation Beth Elohim. %u201c This is the week that our religious school classes turn to Chanukah, and our arts and crafts program will begin to reflect in their products: all that is starting around now.%u201d SPIRITUALLY SPEAKINGWhile it is probably the most widely recognized, publicized and celebrated of the Jewish holidays, Chanukah is not high on the list as far as religious significance. %u201c It%u2019s actually a fairly minor holiday, spiritually,%u201d explains Weider. Chanukah commemorates the wresting and rebuilding of the Jewish Holy Temple in Jerusalem from ancient Assyrians; it is more a festive paean to individuality than a somber, philosophical occasion geared toward introspection. %u201c TheRabbi Gerald Weider at the Garfield Temple showing students in the afterschool program the lighting of candles on the menorah. (Feldman Photo)- - c --------A ,-%u25a0 1 I V 1 IUUJI freedom of a people in the world,and of individuals in a society,%u201d Weider says.%u201c We are reminded during Chanukah,%u201d he continues, %u201cof oppression that has taken place. At this time, we are encouraged to renew our allegiences with synagogue, family and freedom%u2014freedom in America, and freedom for the world, and the Jews all over it.%u201dLike many other Jewish holidays, the relation of Chanukah to the present is double-edged. Although it is drawn from the ancient and historical as far as ritual and fact, it picks from the past and applies to the future, calling for the end of tyranny and oppression on ever scale from in the home on through to the politicial or social slavery that may grip a country or continent. Looking back to the days when Judah Maccabee and a band of driven Jewish refugees assaulted sieged and finally won back their temple that had been thrown downh t r rxrvt-u v e i n o W < p i H r * r~ J ~ r r o -parallels through the ages with thatcircumstance, up to and including present politics. %u201c It%u2019s easy enough to make comparisons with Judah Maccabee,%u201d he says, noting that this is what gives Chanukah a continued relevance and a spiritual value beyond the lighting of candles.IN THE HOMEThe Festival of Lights delights children because it involves the giving of gifts on each of the seven days that candles are lit on the menorah, or branched candelabra. Each lighting on each living commemorates the burning of the Eternal Lamp in the newly-regained temple; after the temple was won, as legend retells it, there was only enough oil on the grounds to light the lamp for one day, but it flamed consecutively for seven days until new oil could be brought in. The continued combustion has also lent its symbols to the traditional children%u2019s game ofdreidel. The dreidel is a small, four-sided top, with each sidemarked with the first letter from a word in the Hebrew sentence %u201c Nesh Godol Haya Sham,%u201d or %u201c a great miracle happened there.%u201d Children%u2014and adults, every so often%u2014use the dreidels to win pennies from one another after the Chanukah meal.Speaking of which, it should be noted that the meal is another reason behind the popularity of the holiday. Chanukah is aimed at reuniting and gathering the family together, like other holidays, and as such heaps of chow are required; but, unlike other occasions, there is not a preponderance of prayer and ceremony at the dinner table, its a more palatable time for the young or more secular types. And, inasmuch as the holiday has no officially-prescribed foods, there is still one which infallibly raises its fried head. No Chanukah table is ever fully full without the latkes, or potato pancakes, that crisply and thinlv elevate Chanukah to the heights of a comestible Occasion.BY LIBBY HAYMANIn some countries, it is said, holiday baking begins many weeki ahead of time. Beautiful, delicate cookies and cakes are tucked into tins in preparation for celebrating all twelve days of Christmas with special sweets. In this country, such a marathon is rare, and plenty of people view Christmas cookies only as the result of an obligatory excercise, rolling out dough, cutting out stars, throwing on some colored sugar. It wouldn%u2019t be Christmas without Christmas cookies, some feel, and it wouldn't be January without throwing some away.Fortunately, most people have found another approach. One is tc broaden the definition of Christmas cookie to include whatever you like best. A well-made and well-lovec chocolate chip ce>okie is certainly %u00a3 lot more festive than colorec cardboard. But if you feel tha holiday baking has to look special why not start drawing on some %u00a9 the vast tradition of beautiful crisj cookies which are easy to make i your equipment is right. Luckih for all of us, that equipment is righ at hand in shops around th< neighborhoods, so let a few smal purchases revolutionize the con tents of this year%u2019s tins.IMAGINATION IS THE KEYOne comment though; cookie cutters are still the first order o baking business. The key here i not the recipe-most work fine, it i some care in preparation and som< imagination which count. Don' load the bowl up with flour in orde to make the dough firm enough t< iiauuie, but chill t h e J u i i g h W C, instead.Page 14, The PHOENIX, December 6,1979