Last year at this time, we were only focused on bringing our little girl home, and we’ve never been big Christmas people, so we had just a pitiful little tree and bought some gifts for our little girl at the last minute. So this year I decided to put a lot more effort into the holiday to start making traditions for our growing family.
I’m calling our theme “Christmas with Chinese Characteristics.” For our tree, the main color is red and I included my Mulan and Mushu inspired ornaments that I got at Disney World when we were there this summer.
I have also hidden hongbao in the tree with different amounts of money in them. On Christmas day everyone will pick a hongbao and get either a little bit of money or a lot of bit of money.
I also used hongbao as tags on the gifts. I taped the flap to the boxes so you just flip them up to see who gets the box. I’m not the most crafty person, but I really like the hongbao gift tags. Of course, I buy my hongbao here in China, but You can find lots of hongbao on Amazon.
The pièce de résistance of the tree, though, is our Monkey King tree topper. He is actually a puppet that I got at Silver Dollar City many years ago. He is the protector of the tree, warding away destructive cats and kids.
After Christmas, I plan to keep the tree up and convert it into a Chinese New Year tree. I am going to replace a lot of the ornaments with little lanterns and hopefully find some small oranges I can attach to the tree. I’ll have to add a lot more hongbao as well.