Christmas tree outfit
Made of cotton wool, straw, banana leaves and sea shells: what journey a New Year toy has made throughout its history
A fabulous holiday is approaching, which means that it is time to think about Christmas decorations for forest beauties. Nowadays, shops offer a wide range of products — from bright garlands to coloured baubles, cones, icicles, and what not. Our correspondents have found out about the trend this year.

Baubles, tinsel, and more
Shops offer a wide variety of New Year toys. Most of them are baubles. The predominant colours are red, white, blue, silver and gold. Green baubles are particularly in abundance. No wonder — the Year of the Green Snake is coming. The price depends on the size and number of items in the set.There are a lot of Belarusian-made decorations on the shelves, including handmade products made by artisans in a variety of techniques — made of wood and straw, knitted, felted, hand-painted — sold mainly individually, in beautiful gift packages so that you could buy them not only for yourself. As for painted baubles, these are decorated using a bas-relief pattern technique at the Minsk-based factory.

In general, the production is divided into the manufacture of polyceramic toys, glass molded toys, and various baubles. From 50 to 100 new models are added to the collection every year.
“This year’s novelties include a bear, a penguin, a white tiger. Our classic toys — bullfinches, nutcrackers — are selling well. Last year, we released white lace-up skates. They also hit the target and sold like hot cakes. Now we offer drawstring mittens,” shared designer and head of production Anastasia Golub.
If you are not in the mood or have no time to go outside, you can buy Christmas tree toys online. Luckily, there is a large selection in online stores. It is just a pity that you won’t be able to touch the products.

Legend in glass
Belarus’ National History Museum has been hosting an exhibition of Christmas tree toys for many years. Collections from more than 70 countries are presented there. Thus, products in the shape of the Eiffel Tower have come from France, glass jars and baubles with various inscriptions were made in the USA, while red dragons and paper lanterns are Chinese New Year attributes.In the post-war years, toys were made from improvised materials, in particular from cotton wool. A wire frame was made, onto which cotton wool was wound. The structure was processed with paste and painted, as noted by Olesya Sevnitskaya, a research associate at the National History Museum, “The first glass toys appeared in the German town of Lauscha. If you believe the legend, its inhabitants used to always decorate the Christmas tree with fruits and various sweets, in particular apples. It turned out to be a lean year, and then the local glassblowers got out of the situation by making glass apples instead of real ones.”
Christmas tree ornaments often ‘illustrated’ landmark events. For instance, after Yuri Gagarin flew into space, a New Year toy was made in the form of a rocket with the inscription ‘USSR’. “The oldest toys in the museum are about a hundred years old. They are a bust of German ruler Kaiser Wilhelm and the airships, which were called ‘zeppelins’ — in honour of the inventor and design engineer, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. All these decorations are still in good condition, the paint has not come off, as the products were painted from the inside. This is their difference from modern toys, which lose their former brightness over the years,” explained the researcher.
The pearl of the collection is a one-and-a-half-kilogramme glass bauble from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is more than a century old. “New Year and Christmas are celebrated in many countries. Christmas tree toys were not always made of glass,” Olesya Sevnitskaya pointed out. “In the Bahamas, for example, sea shells were the main material, in Indonesia — wood, while in the Congo — banana leaves. In Belarus, people used straw items to decorate the enchanting forest beauty.”

AS YOU TRIM YOUR CHRISTMAS TREE, SO SHALL YOU CELEBRATE NEW YEAR
Kristina Korolyova, a florist and decorator, shared some of the subtleties of design skills, “Since the coming 2025 is the Year of the Green Snake, the trend colours will be emerald, silver, gold, champagne and white. You need to start decorating the Christmas tree from the bottom, hanging large baubles. Then go up and take smaller elements. The main thing is not to overload the tree and ensure harmony in everything. If you have a natural Christmas tree, remember that it has more fragile branches. Therefore, the toys need to be lighter.”
According to the decorator, eco-style ornaments look beautiful. Minimalism, natural materials, knitted elements are welcome, “Large and small cones can be wrapped in snow using a spray; candied berries, and ribbons can be added. In order for the Christmas tree to shine, there should be a lot of illumination, so you can hang LED garlands with monochrome lights.”

By Aleksandra Yankovich