Holiday spirit reaches journalism room

While Santa’s elves were busy sleeping in their comfortable beds in the North Pole, the two of us were decorating. As the only people hallucinating sugar plums before Thanksgiving had even come around, it fell to us to bring a slice of holiday cheer to room 303.

And thus, armed with red ornaments in one hand and paper snowflakes in the other, we began transforming the journalism room into a holiday wonderland. Our goal was to outdo last year’s impressive decorations, done by fourth period editor-in-chief Christine Bancroft.

After almost forgetting her bag of holiday goodies at home, Rachel was eager to show off what she’d dug up from her red-and-green boxes the night before. And so the two of us got down to business.

Phase one of our decoration plan involved tacking up Rachel’s holiday-themed gift bows and handmade paper snowflakes to the journalism room’s walls.

Once the basics were up, we strived to bring the holiday spirit to the classroom with red velvet bows, small stockings and a Christmas tree-shaped welcome sign. A few other knickknacks, like a couple of wreath ornaments and some homespun childhood decorations, also found their way onto the walls in the back of the room.

The finishing touch for day one of decorating was stringing a piece of multi-colored yarn, adorned with a variety of ornaments, bows and snowflakes, across the front of the room, while a photographer dutifully followed us and snapped the occasional picture.

Of course, there are dangers involved in every job, as illustrated when the cover of last year’s yearbook toppled down on Rachel’s head. By a near Christmas miracle, the incident was not captured by a photographer, though it did warrant a few amused looks and bursts of laughter from those watching.

Day two of the spread of holiday cheer began when Nitya entered the room with a wide array of even more decorations. The walls were splattered with red and gold flowers, crystals and shimmering snowflakes. We even embellished the ceiling by climbing up on the desks around the room.

The price of such extravagant decorations, however, was the sparkly residue left everywhere from the desks and chairs to our hands, clothes and faces.

The last of our holiday spirit was manifested in the twinkling tinsel and radiant ribbon we tacked to the vacant parts of the walls.

Pleased with the tremendous amount of decorating we had accomplished in two days, we were slightly discouraged when our advisor Mr. Tyler jokingly blamed us for the recent cold weather, attributing it to the wintery vibe we had given the room. Well, it is often said that magic comes with price.

Although there were a few stumbles along the way, the decorating experience was still filled with lots of enjoyable chaos, sparkly madness and heartfelt laughter. In future years, we hope to have the chance to do this again and eventually make it a tradition.

Even though Santa’s real elves are still sleeping in the North Pole, the journalism room has its own elves—us. With holiday spirit as our present and falcons as our reindeer, we’re happy to be their replacements.