Notes From the Ward Christmas Party

September Writing Challenge - Prompt #11:

One Year Ago

This is a long and overly detailed post. Sorry/not sorry. I actually wrote most of this back in December and never finished it. I thought I would go ahead and post it now because people are going to start planning Christmas parties pretty soon, and those who endure to the end of this post, might get something useful out of it… or be totally bored. Who knows?

Last year I helped with our ward (church congregation’s) Christmas party. As we planned and carried out the event, we discussed documenting some things for future reference. I find that kind of knowledge extremely helpful later if I’m involved in planning another event, and I know, as an avid Googler of Things that the info can be helpful for others, too. So here I’ll give a rundown of our ward Christmas party from 2022, including some of the exciting things we learned (because there are always hilarious mishaps behind the scenes).

My assignment was decorations, so there’s a lot I don’t know about other aspects of the party, such as the food, the invitations, and the program, but there are still a few things I can share in those regards. 

The Theme

The party was centered around a Christian song and music video called “Come to the Table.” In the video, people are presented with a literal invitation to come to the table. The invitations for our ward Christmas party were designed to look like the invitations in the video. 

The message of the song is beautiful. 

Our Relief Society president was assigned to be in charge of the party this year. When she asked me to help, she had a few things in mind:

- She wanted to decor to be simple and humble, centered around Christ, and free from commercialism 

- She wanted a sign that said “Come to the Table”

- She suggested garland and twinkle lights

- She wanted an “earthy” color scheme 

- She wanted to incorporate scriptures about service 

- She didn’t want anything on the stage or anything complicated or large

So with that, I got to work. 

The Decorations

I researched the pricing of garland online and found (as I suspected) that it would be pretty pricey. I needed about 150 feet (we planned on using 18 (8') tables). I knew the odds of finding 150 feet of garland at the thrift store would be slim, but in October, I started checking the thrift store once a week. On my first trip, they had several Christmas wreaths, and I ended up buying them and cutting the pine off them to use as garland. It worked great, so from then on, I just popped into the thrift store regularly and bought all the Christmas wreaths. I had to remove ribbon and ornaments occasionally, but I was able to get quite a bit of garland that way. 

I also hit up Facebook to see if anyone was getting rid of any garland or wreaths. I had a neighbor bring me about 18 feet of garland, which was a wonderful contribution.

I ended up having to buy a little bit of garland from Walmart. For the record, I could have bought all of the garland from Walmart for about $75. I spent about $50 on garland. So I saved money my way, but not an astronomical amount. The stuff I found at the thrift store was also a lot higher quality than the stuff from Walmart, but it didn’t really matter for this project. 

I decided, in keeping things inexpensive, to use the decorations from my basement tree to place throughout the garland. That included stars with the names of Christ, some nativity ornaments, and some glittery balls. I had a ton of burlap and lace ribbon that I bought from the DI several months prior, so we wove that through the garland. I also had some mason jars and battery powered tea lights that I placed around the tables - just things I already had around my house. 

Some notes on garland:

- Garland requires fluffing which can hurt your hands. We wore gardening gloves to fluff (fluffing is the WORST! I hate fluffing!) I enlisted a few friends to help - my very own fluffing committee!

- Garland is very messy, so we had to clean the tables and sweep the floors after we decorated. My friend, Julie, had a great idea to use a Dustbuster to clean up the tables, and it worked wonderfully! So take note: garland decorating should always be accompanied by a Dustbuster! I was worried that the mess from the garland would be unmanageable, but it wasn’t too bad with the Dustbuster. We did have to sweep the floor after we decorated, but with a dust mop, that goes pretty quickly!

- We clipped the garland to whatever size we needed and ran it between bread baskets. I used packaging tape to hold it in place.

To incorporate scriptures about service, I gathered a bunch of picture frames of different sizes and colors (sticking with whites, silver, gold, and wood tones). I used several of my own and then purchased a lot from the DI. My goal was to NOT have to do anything to them (I tried to find them “table ready”) but I ended up having to spray paint about 20 because, by the time the week of the party rolled around, I’d scoured several thrift stores and hadn’t found enough frames in the right condition. Sadly, the price of spray paint has gone up like everything else. Fortunately, I was able to use the leftover paint for a Young Women project the following week. 

Some notes on frames:

- They take so much longer to clean, paint, and put photos in than you would ever think

- If you take them apart to paint them, make sure you use a sophisticated system to keep track of which glass/backs go to which frames (I knew this, and I still messed up and ended up having to take apart frames over and over again)

- Spray painting in the cold is never ideal - it affects the quality of the paint (again, I knew this, but left myself with no other choice in the end)

The Sign

Like I mentioned, the Relief Society president wanted some sort of sign that said “Come to the Table.” I found a whitewashed, blank sign at the DI for $3 and painted on the lettering. Then I stapled some garland to it. I had a flickering lantern that my friend Christie gave me for Christmas one year, so I decorated that to match, and then I found an old book (from DI) that had a picture of Christ at the table (see what I did there) for the last supper. I cut it out and put it in a frame. 

I also found a sparkly piece of fabric on clearance that I made into a table cloth. 

The Food

For this dinner, we served soup. I wasn’t involved in the food planning, so I don’t know much about quantities and the like, but we had zupa toscano and chicken gnocchi from Olive Garden (the real deal - actually ordered from Olive Garden) and chicken noodle from Kneaders. Then there were bread baskets on all the tables with a variety of rolls.

(I wasn’t in charge of the baskets, but I can tell you many of them came from the DI. They were lined with napkins and burlap). 

A few things I do know:

- The food people said that Olive Garden soup was a lot cheaper than Kneaders - FYI for anyone ever wanting to order soup. However, a normal ward budget doesn’t really allow for Olive Garden and Kneaders soups (we had a bit of a “budget blip” for this party).

- The soups were packaged in gallon sized buckets, and we poured them into stockpots to serve them.

- Olive Garden did not label their soups, and the zupa and gnocchi looked very similar, so we ended up having an accidental miscellaneous soup because they got mixed together in a large stockpot.

- Soup leaks through compostable bowls. Luckily, someone boiled some water and poured it in one of the bowls they were planning to serve in to test them out to determine if we should let people carry their soup bowls from the serving table or wheel it to them on a cart (I was pro-carry because I think it would have taken way too long to serve by cart. I’m a strong advocate for efficient food lines and gettinge people served quickly while the food is hot). The liquid seeped through the bowls, so they had to buy different bowls. That would have made for a memorable Christmas party! (The Amazon listing for the bowls said they were good for hot liquids - apparently that is not the case). 

The Set Up

We used 18 (8') tables (six rows of three), which was perfect for our ward. Here is where I messed up, though. I intended to count how many people came to compare it to how many people we planned on. I didn't write those numbers down. But as far as set up, we had enough seating (we usually set up extra tables in the overflow and only open it if necessary, and we didn't even do that!)

I think we originally planned on about 175 people, but then as the event grew closer we reduced that to 150. I’ll bet we ended up with about 130-140. 

Now here are some things I learned and/or observed that I wanted to take note of:

-I think it would be helpful to keep the kitchen window closed and keep ward members out of the kitchen area unless they have an assignment requiring them to be in there. If you leave the kitchen accessible, everyone thinks they can pop in and take whatever they want. This was a problem at dessert time because there was a line of people waiting at the serving table for dessert, and ward members kept bypassing the line and coming straight to the kitchen and taking the plated desserts which kept us from getting them out to the table in a timely manner, so all of the people in line were getting short-changed by the stinkers going in the kitchen. I really wanted to put a stop to this, but I wasn’t in charge, so I just silently cried for the people waiting in line.

-I am always in favor of having the line go down two sides of the table. This didn't work with serving soup because we had people scooping the soup, but perhaps we could have done two serving tables.

-If you want to do the program before the meal, consider having some type of appetizer. “Hangry” is real, and the children (and this mom) are hangry. People ate the rolls before the meal was served and then wanted more with their soup, but we didn’t have extra.

-When serving a one-dish meal (like soup), you need a lot more than one roll per person. I would plan on two per person, that way, some can eat 1 and some can eat 3, and in the end, hopefully everyone will be full and happy.

-When setting up chairs at a table, always make sure to leave enough space between chairs to accommodate the average human thigh. Our chairs were placed so close together that people couldn't get into their seats. I was planning on 24 chairs per table, but the men who set them up did 28.

Overall, I think the party went very well. When I jotted down my notes afterward, I had no idea that our ward would be dissolved less than a year later, and that it was our last Christmas party. I thought I’d be able to pass on some good information to whoever headed up the party this year, but everything will be different this Christmas since we’re in a new ward. 

Maybe I won’t have to be involved this year. Or maybe I will. I’m sure I’ll find out soon. This new ward isn’t wasting any time. I’m already subbing in nursery this week, and I got a call from the executive secretary today, and we haven’t even been to church yet!