Craft a holiday broom - Scandinavian Christmas craft 'jul gren kvast'

Instructor, Nov-Dec, 1997 by Judith Logan Lehne

My students and I enrich our classroom celebration of winter holidays by recreating a traditional Scandinavian Christmas craft called jul gren kvast (pronounced "yule gren kah vahst") or green Christmas broom. Traditionally, Scandinavian families made these brooms to decorate their porches and sweep their steps at Christmastime. We make a large class jul gren kvast and kids make smaller ones to take home as gifts or decorations.

Materials

* a few buckets of pine clippings and about ten pine boughs (We ask a local Christmas-tree seller to donate these.)

* one 6-inch dowel for every student and one 5-foot dowel (We ask a local hardware store to donate these.)

* heavy twine (Also donated by hardware store.)

* eight yards of 3-inch-wide red ribbon. (A local craft store donates this.)

* an old broom handle or bare branch

1 Before we begin, we locate the Scandinavian countries on the map, examine their topography, and research the types of pine trees found in that area. We then log on to the Web to research what the weather is like there in December.

2 We make our class Christmas broom by wrapping twine around several branches that we place at the end of the 5-foot dowel.

3 Volunteers and I attach additional boughs around the dowel. We continue until we have formed a complete circle of boughs that look like the sweeping end of a broom.

4 To secure the boughs, we wrap the twine around a few more times.

5 Next we wrap the ribbon around the twine and tie on a bow.

6 Students make miniature green brooms by following the directions above, using 6-inch dowels and small pine-bough clippings.