Mary Cuffy

“How the Grinch Stole Christ­mas” is a clas­sic tale about learn­ing the true mean­ing of giv­ing, shar­ing, and fam­i­ly. The Grinch hates Christ­mas, and for 53 years he tries to end it by tak­ing all the presents and food in Whoville. At the end of the sto­ry, he re­alis­es that Christ­mas can be cel­e­brat­ed with­out those things be­cause the true mean­ing of the hol­i­day does not come in ‘things with tags, pack­ages, box­es or bags.”  

“It does not come from a store, it means a lit­tle bit more.”

The Grinch ex­pe­ri­ences a pro­found, mag­i­cal change. How­ev­er, he does not do it alone.

The change that the Grinch un­der­goes gives peo­ple hope. Hope that the bad things and peo­ple in the world can be bet­ter. Hope that giv­en the right cir­cum­stances, things can change.

That hope is im­por­tant to be­lieve in. Ul­ti­mate­ly, I think this is the great­est rea­son that the

sto­ry has stood the test of time, and why it gives us all warm, fuzzy feel­ings.

Author Mary Cuffy gets her face painted like the Grinch.

Lets’ start by dec­o­rat­ing some Whoville trees

To make the Christ­mas trees you will need:

·      30 cm green pipe clean­ers

·      mi­ni pom poms

·      a glue gun or white glue

·      cot­ton or string to hang them

1. The first thing you need to do is curl your pipe clean­er in­to a snail shell shape.

2. Next, care­ful­ly pull up from the cen­tre of the pipe clean­er to cre­ate your cone shape. It will look a bit like a coiled spring.

3. Once you have your cone shape, wrap/tuck the out­er end of the pipe clean­er around the next curl to se­cure a cir­cle base. This will al­low the pipe clean­er Christ­mas tree to stand up firm­ly.

*Fi­nal­ly, glue your pom poms to the pipe clean­er. For speed, you can use a glue gun. But I pre­fer to use thick tacky white PVA glue. It takes longer to dry, but it leaves a neater fin­ish.

Af­ter you have com­plet­ed your cre­ation, take a pic­ture and email it to mary.cuffy@ya­hoo.com 

Grinch